Jurgen Klopp blasts Neville brothers over Loris Karius

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has launched a withering attack on pundit Gary Neville after the former Manchester United defender’s criticism of goalkeeper Loris Karius.

After the 4-3 defeat at Bournemouth, Neville said the summer signing from Mainz was “miles away” only for Karius to respond in an interview published at the weekend by saying: “He was a manager for a short bit and now he is back to being an expert again”.

Karius came under more scrutiny after his error led to Dimitri Payet scoring a free-kick in the 2-2 draw with West Ham on Sunday but Klopp was not interested in getting into a debate about his goalkeeper.

Instead he turned his attention to Gary and Phil Neville, after the latter appeared on Match of the Day advising the goalkeeper to “keep his mouth shut and do his job”.

“First of all my job is to protect the players as much as I can but I am not in the pitch so I cannot go with them,” Klopp said.

“The pundits, former players most of them, forgot completely how it felt when they got criticised.

“Especially the Neville brothers: The one who was the manager (Gary), he obviously should know that too much criticism never helps.

“But he is not interested in helping a Liverpool player, I can imagine, but that makes the things he says not make more sense.

“He showed he struggled with the job to judge players (during his short-lived and unsuccessful spell with Valencia) when he was manager so why do we let him talk about players on television?

“I don’t listen to them. I am pretty sure Carra (Jamie Carragher) doesn’t speak too positively about Man United players.

“Obviously the Neville brothers don’t like Liverpool, I have no problem with that.”

In a parting shot to Gary Neville, Klopp added: “By the way, you can tell him I am not on Twitter so if he wants to tell me something Twitter doesn’t help.”

Klopp had deflected an earlier question about Karius as he did not want to add to the growing storm around him.

“Whatever I would say about this would create headlines,” he said, moments before launching into the Nevilles.

“The good things, the bad things, and I am absolutely not interested in creating headlines so you can write what you want.

“There is nothing to say about it. A few things are obvious, a few things are not obvious, a few things are the truth, a few things are not right but that is too much for me to think about.”