Jurgen Klopp has dismissed Joey Barton’s claims that Liverpool are stagnating under him.
The gap between the Reds and Premier League leaders Manchester City has stretched to 14 points but they remain just six points adrift of second place.
Barton, currently banned from football for 18 months for gambling offences, later accused the club of ‘regressing’ with the former Borussia Dortmund coach.
However Klopp, now two years in the Anfield hot seat, insists that his side are continuing to progress and cited last weekend’s draw with Chelsea in his evidence.
He said: “Yes, we’ve made progress – 100 per cent.
“We are more patient in the right way in specific games – very, very important for us. We feel really on a good way.
“Chelsea is an unbelievably difficult team to play and we played them in a manner that was completely different to the last two years.
“We won [at Stamford Bridge] but it was completely different, we dominated them. They came here and gave us the ball and said, ‘come on, try something’ – and we were there and did it.
“That’s fantastic, absolutely fantastic, at the end you want to win, or you have to win, but we didn’t.
“But I still feel that we are on a good way and that’s what we have to show again, again and again.
“Until the end of January it is a really decisive period of the season and we need to be 100 per cent spot on but my feeling is that we are.”