Liverpool coach Jurgen Klopp says it would be unfair to deny his side the Premier League title should the rest of the season be cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Reds hold a 25-point lead over closest rivals Manchester City and are on the cusp of a first top-flight triumph in 30 years.

The Covid-19 outbreak put their title march on pause in March, however, and there were calls for the rest of the season to be scrapped without declaring winners.

On Monday, all 20 Premier League teams agreed to step up their return to training as they hope to start playing again from June 12, though there is no guarantee it will be safe for games to go ahead by then.

And Klopp feels it would have been wrong to bring a premature end to the campaign and deprive Liverpool of the glory.

He said at a talk at the DFB Academy: ‘There was talk that people wanted to declare the season null and void. So you thought: “Huh? We have played 76% of the season and you just want to delete the thing?”

‘That would have been something that I personally would find unfair, to just say that it didn’t happen.

‘We are first in the home table, we are first in the away table. It is a season in which we should become champions.

‘Dealing with the crisis is the most important thing. But that doesn’t mean that certain things are of no importance at all just because they are less important.

‘I think there are worse things in life than not becoming champions. A lot of people around us have big problems. People die, it always happens, but at the moment because of a virus that we all didn’t know and for which nobody could be prepared.

‘We cannot prepare for everything, but also have to react often. That’s the biggest part of my life, reacting to things that I didn’t expect.’

The German coach is confident that the English top flight will make training grounds safe for players, as clubs have already done in Germany.

‘People say: “How can you think about football, in moments when people are dying out there?” Nobody does that, but like every other branch of business, we have to prepare for the time afterwards, because it will come, of course.

‘When it comes to football, that means that we will start training at some point and to make sure everyone is safe, unique measures are taken.

‘As they were made in Germany, they are now being taken in England. The training centers of the English professional clubs will be the safest. There are no places to be infected at all.’