Jurgen Klopp has shot down Gary Neville’s claim Liverpool could benefit from a Champions League exit.
Wednesday’s last 16 tie with Bayern Munich is delicately poised with the Reds needing either a score draw or better to progress to the quarter final stage.
Neville has regularly opined that the Anfield club’s Premier League title prospects would be enhanced by bowing out of Europe’s elite club competition.
But Klopp has issued a withering rebuttal to the former Manchester United defender turned media pundit ahead of the Allianz Stadium showdown.
He said: “That’s the reason why they don’t have a job on the sideline – one of the reasons.
“It is so easy to sit in a studio and talk about things like that.
“You draw a season and say the best way to go through it is to go out of all the cup competitions early. You do that and the same people go for you like mad.
“Now it is closer to the end of the season and it is allowed to go out of the Champions League without even trying? That’s really mad.”
The Liverpool manager also underlined the importance of qualifying for the Champions League due to the club’s business model of self-sufficience.
“We have to qualify constantly for Champions League,” said Klopp.
“That’s what gives us the money to improve to make the next step and then the next step.
“When we qualified by beating Napoli, I’m not sure how much it was worth, but it was a lot of money in one game.
“I didn’t think for a second before that game: ‘Oh my God, we have to earn this money for the club’, but after we got through it was like: ‘Wow, that is proper money.’
“It is a money-throwing competition and we have to be in it as long as possible because we have to improve the situation for the club.
“It’s not like we can always ask people: ‘Do you have some money? Do you have some money?’ We have to earn most of the money for ourselves with the football that we play.
“That is exactly what you can do in the Champions League. If it happens, it will be a great night. If it doesn’t happen it is not the end of the world.
“But I don’t think for a second that it will not happen.”