Jurgen Klopp has suggested Liverpool is reliant on the Champions League financially in ways some of their peers are not.

Gary Neville suggested Liverpool might have a better chance of winning the Premier League if they're not also in the Champions League.

“That’s the reason why they don’t have a job on the sideline – one of the reasons,” Klopp said.

Liverpool made £72 million from reaching last season’s Champions League final, money that contributed to a world record pre-tax profit for a football club of £125m for the 2017-18 financial year.

“We have to qualify constantly for Champions League,” Klopp said. “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 [in December], I’m not sure how much it was worth [£10.67m for winning the game and reaching the knockout stage] 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.”