Klopp says 'pressure is off' after Liverpool's late-season collapse

Liverpool have won just one of their past five league games and it would now take a miracle for them to catch Arsenal and Manchester City. The club were at one stage on track to win a quadruple but will end the season with just the League Cup, though they are already guaranteed Champions League football for next season.

"It is an achievement," Klopp said. "Does it feel to everybody like that? Probably not, but to me it does and that's how the perspective can change during a season. "Because for a while we obviously looked like we could go all the way or at least stay in the race for longer, which was definitely possible.

"For different reasons that didn't work out but it's still probably third place in the league behind two teams who have done really well and they go all the way." The German, 56, said he wanted his team to play with freedom in his last three matches, starting with Sunday's home game against fifth-placed Tottenham.

"The pressure is off now. That's done. It would be really cool if we could play really, really good football again," he said. "That would be absolutely nice because obviously we have been very tense in the last weeks, we had a super-intensive period as well."

Aston Villa's 4-2 defeat in the first leg of their Europa Conference League semi-final against Olympiakos on Thursday means it is unlikely that any English team will be in a European final this season. Klopp was adamant the Premier League was still the top league in the world but said some of the TV scheduling was a "crime".

"If you make of the fact that English teams are not in the finals, if you make of that that we all under-performed," he said. "There might be moments, us against Atalanta, stuff like that, but in general I've watched a lot