Stan Collymore has hit back at Roy Keane after the former Manchester United man branded Liverpool “bad champions”. Keane made the comments following the Reds’ disappointing 4-1 defeat to Manchester City at Anfield on Sunday. The result leaves Liverpool fourth in the table and 10 points adrift of leaders City, who have a game in hand. It was third consecutive home defeat for Jurgen Klopp’s side, who are defending the title they won so emphatically last season.
After the City match, Roy Keane said “We spoke before the game about that they are making a lot of excuses, but to me, they’ve been bad champions. I don’t mean today, you can lose a game of football, but I can’t figure this group out. Even in the game against Brighton, Brighton were comfortable against them, you can be beaten in a game but there’s a way to be beaten. I don’t see that, I think we’ve all believed the hype over the last year or two. We spoke about there being some sort of drop off, but they’re playing for Liverpool. It’s as if they won the league last year and got a bit carried away, and all believed their own hype that they were going to beat teams. But in my mindset when you’ve won a league title, the next challenge was always, can we do it again? I never got the impression from this group, from their interviews, even from their manager last year when they won it, saying what’s the next step for Liverpool – it was almost let’s enjoy this, obviously it was a long wait for them but I never heard any of the players come out and say: ‘We want to do it again’. That’s the key. They’re now talking about wanting to get in the top four from winning the league last year to all of a sudden finishing in the top four is where their targets are. I think they’ve been bad champions. We’re talking about Liverpool, people keep telling me Liverpool are a great club and a huge club. If they’re a huge club then you have to take setbacks, is that not part of the game? If everyone had all their players fit all of the time, it would be fantastic. If you want to look at Man City – with the run they’ve been on – you could see they’re missing two of their best players and Liverpool are a strong team. I know they’re missing their two centre-backs but they’ve still got their best attacking players on the pitch. They still have their best goalkeeper available, they’ve still got international players in midfield…”
Collymore joined Nottingham Forest in the same summer that Keane left the City Ground for Man United, back in 1993 – and the former Liverpool striker disagrees with his latest comments.
Stan Collymore said: “Keane’s ‘bad Champions’ comment was off. Roy walked into Champions of England from Forest (who were relegated) so had existing Champions to help him along. United won long after he left too. Trent, Robertson, Henderson etc all made themselves Champions from scratch. Context.”
