Jürgen Klopp refuses to rise to Jose Mourinho's claim that Liverpool will struggle with European football

Jürgen Klopp has resisted Jose Mourinho’s attempt to lure him into a war of words after refusing to be drawn on the Manchester United manager’s claims that Liverpool will struggle this season.

Mourinho believes that both Liverpool and defending Premier League champions Chelsea will find the 2017/18 season much harder than they did last term as they return to European football. The two clubs appeared to benefit from being able to rest players when their rivals were competing in the Champions League and Europa League, and Mourinho believes that the resumption of continental football will have an impact on their chances of Premier League success.

But when faced with questions about Mourinho’s comments, Klopp would not be drawn on the Portuguese’s comments and noted that United had the same situation arise across 2015/16 and 2016/17.

“I’m not interested in what Jose Mourinho says,” Klopp responded. “Why should I talk about Manchester United? Jose is talking about us, yes. We had a season of what Man United had the year before. I don’t know if anybody asked us how it felt (then).”

Klopp did concede though that the addition of Champions League football this season will have an impact on how Liverpool’s season plays out, given he will almost certainly need to call on more players during the campaign.

Yet he reiterated that the subject is not one he wants to talk about ahead of the new season, and quickly shut down his answer before elaborating on how the increase in matches could impact his own team.

“The Europa League was hard,” Klopp added. “Yes, Chelsea will feel also the difference, they played something like 13 players last season. But it’s also not my problem if they use only 11, well done. I do not want to be part of this – I am not interested.”

The German was also not interested in discussing the transfer business already completed across Merseyside by arch-rivals Everton. The Toffees have made eight signings this summer and have shown no signs of letting up, with a £45m offer for Swansea’s Gylfi Sigurdsson rejected this week as well as retaining a hope of signing Arsenal’s Olivier Giroud, should he leave the Gunners.

But Klopp was unmoved on Everton’s transfer business, and said he will not pay attention to them until they meet in the first Merseyside derby of the year on 9 December.

“I’m not interested in what other clubs are doing until we play them,” he said. “So they can make the best business or the worst business, I’m not in it.

“I heard, of course a few things that they have done. Strikers, good. Wayne Rooney, you don’t have to talk about. The centre-half (Michael) Keane came. Good. So a lot of really good business. (Davy) Klaassen. So it’s all good.

“There is a lot of respect and if they’ve done good business, well done. But when we face them we still want to win.”