Rodgers brushes off mutiny talk and reiterates Champions League hopes
LIVERPOOL manager Brendan Rodgers has dismissed suggestions of dressing-room unrest and insists he has been too quick to write off the team’s chances of earning Champions League qualification.
The Reds boss denied that Saturday’s 4-1 defeat at Arsenal, which left them seven points adrift of the Premier League’s top four, had led to heated exchanges with players when the squad reconvened on Sunday.
“We have lots of meetings here in terms of analysing performance and it was no different to a whole host of meetings we have all year,” he said.
“It was nothing really; it was just analysing performance, analysing where we are at, and then feeding forward to the players. It is just unfortunate that something else was made up. I have a great bunch of players here who tirelessly, every single day, give me everything – and you can see that in how we play.”
Rodgers, whose team face Blackburn in an FA Cup quarter-final replay tomorrow, insists he has not given up on gatecrashing the top four, despite effectively throwing in the towel at the weekend.
“After the game I gave an answer which was logical – mathematics really – in terms of the difficulty we have but it is certainly not a mindset,” Rodgers added.
“It is going to be difficult for us if the teams above us don’t drop points. We would have to win our seven games but it is certainly something we will go into in order to do that.”
Chelsea and Stoke are the only top-10 teams that Liverpool face in their remaining league fixtures.