Jurgen Klopp defends Mauricio Pochettino and Chelsea from Gary Neville’s ‘bottle jobs’ tag

Jurgen Klopp has sprung to Chelsea’s defence by insisting they did not “bottle it” in the Carabao Cup final against Liverpool. Mauricio Pochettino’s team came in for heavy criticism after losing in extra time to a Liverpool side featuring the teenagers Bobby Clark, James McConnell and Jayden Danns and doing too little to win the game after Klopp brought on rookies. Former Manchester United captain Gary Neville branded the big spenders “blue billion-pound bottle jobs” but Klopp disagreed with that assessment. “I’m the one who knows what it’s like to lose five or six finals in a row. I can imagine how it was for Chelsea, everybody tells you, ‘By the way, you lost the last five and that’s a new record.’ It’s not nice I really felt for them. They didn’t deserve to get all the blame [because] they played a really good football game, in a final where nobody plays their absolute best football. You just have to beat the opponent, and that’s what we did.