Ex-Premier League owner SLAMS Klopp and Pep over fixture complaints

Jurgen Klopp blasted TNT Sports in his pre-match press conference before the Premier League game against Tottenham on Sunday. 

The Liverpool manager’s disdain for TNT Sports is well known, with the broadcaster showing games in the early 12:30 BST Saturday kick-off slot that he loathes so much. 

Liverpool have again been selected in the early kick-off slot with regularity this season, including the 2-2 draw with West Ham last weekend.

"It’s always a conversation that I have, saying that ‘yeah but they pay you, they give money to football’ – I don’t see it like that,” the 56-year-old said on Friday.

Klopp has never been shy in expressing his hatred for that particular kick-off slot and has cited the overworking of players and fixture congestion as the main reason behind his feelings.

Scheduling is also an issue that was brought up by Pep Guardiola, the Manchester City manager, following the FA Cup semi-final win against Chelsea two weeks ago. 

Having watched his side tumble out of the Champions League against Real Madrid the previous Wednesday, the Spaniard declared it ‘unacceptable’ that City played again on the Saturday evening. 

But one former Premier League club owner has now taken aim at the two managers, stating that people inside football ‘don’t know they are born’, and imploring the industry to ‘grow up’.

Simon Jordan: ‘They don’t know they’re born!’

“Pep Guardiola walked straight into the FA Cup semi final press conference and started straight away about player welfare,” ex-Crystal Palace owner Simon Jordan said on talkSPORT. 

“Having been in the industry, I've been polluted by the profligacy and the arrogance and the institutionalised thinking so I'm not just one guy working outside the industry saying: ‘Look at these highly-paid footballers’. 

“I've been in that space and got carried away a bit as well, but I cannot not say they don't know they’re born.

“They don't know they’re born. 

“I never like to compare it to the man digging the ditch on the side of the road because that’s a different industry, but they do not know they’re born. What they consider to be hard work and what they consider to be something that's jeopardising their livelihood or their future, their wellbeing bears no significance to 99 percent of what the rest of the world has to endure. 

“And I think it's something that people inside football need to grow up and have a little bit more of a look at themselves, and a word with themselves about the opportunities that they've got.”

'Sense of entitlement'

Jordan, chairman of Palace from 2000 until 2010, reserved some degree of sympathy for Klopp and Liverpool over the manager’s complaints about the 12:30 slot but added that the Reds were suffering the consequences of their own success. 

“The only argument that Jurgen Klopp can have with the broadcasters, and I do see it, is this constant 12:30 slot and it does seem to me that statistics bear out that they've had it more often than not,” he said. 

"And that may well come because it's such an alluring proposition and that the broadcasters that buy those slots want Liverpool because Liverpool provide entertainment in it and you're the victim of your own success. 

“But my biggest concern is sitting across a table from people with a sense of entitlement and that's what happens when you pay people economic wages that are so significant, they get a sense of entitlement. 

“They’re not interested in a solution, they're interested in telling you what they don't want to do and that's not a solution. 

“‘I don't want to play these games’. OK, well on the back of that football could potentially lose 20% of its revenue. ‘Not interested, I want that’.”