Jose Mourinho insists Liverpool do not need to retain the Premier League title in order to prove that they are true champions.

The Reds clinched their first league crown in 30 years last season, running away with the title and finishing with a mammoth 99 points.

This came off the back of narrowly being beaten to the 2018/19 title by Manchester City, despite amassing 97 points, but they beat Tottenham in the Champions League final that season to end their seven-year trophy drought.

Mourinho – who is one of three men to retain the Premier League – was asked about whether Liverpool’s greatness needed to be consolidated with a second successive title, but he defended the work that Jurgen Klopp has done at Anfield.

„Come on,“ he said unamused. „I think Liverpool, since that championship they lost with an incredible, I’m not saying lost, the championship that they didn’t win with an incredible number of points, since that moment, they have been phenomenal.

„They lost the Champions League final, they were phenomenal. Then the next season they win the Champions League and they win the league. Come on.

„The team is the same or better. The coach is the same or better because a coach is something that some job where experience helps you to be better, so for me, always, a coach with one more year is better than he was previously.“

Mourinho explained that the obvious reason as to why Liverpool are underperforming so far this year was the absence of Virgil van Dijk, and that his injury has had an impact at both ends of the pitch.

„They have got some very good players,“ he added. „They lost a fundamental player. We can say what we want, we can try to hide things, but there are some players that are special and they are impossible to replace. Even sometimes the defensive process has a relation with losing an attacking player, and the attacking process sometimes has also a relation with the defensive player that you lost – it looks a contradiction, but it’s not a contradiction.

„Very stable defensively is a team with much better conditions to attack, and vice versa. They lost Van Dijk, very important for them, so if they had one or two results, not the best results they didn’t score as many goals as they produce, it’s normal that they went into a little phase of lost confidence and bad results. But for me, they are the same. For me, nothing changes in the way I look to Liverpool.“

When the question was again put to Mourinho if Liverpool needed to successfully defend their championship to prove their worth, he was firmly defiant.

„No, a champion is a champion,“ he said. „You win the title and you are a champion, period.“