Ange Postecoglou: Liverpool currently the best team in the world | OneFootball

Ange Postecoglou says Liverpool are currently the best team in the world and that it's unwise to assess where Tottenham Hotspur are based on their 4-0 defeat at Anfield.

Spurs travelled to Merseyside with a slender advantage in their two-legged Carabao Cup semi-final tie but were comprehensively outplayed by a team who currently top the Premier League table by nine points.

Arne Slot's Reds also topped the league phase of the reformatted Champions League, winning their first seven games before heavy rotation – having already qualified for the knockout stages – saw them slip to defeat at PSV Eindhoven.

After levelling the tie through Cody Gakpo's 16th goal of the season in all competitions, Liverpool hit the front thanks to Mohamed Salah's penalty and didn't look back. Dominik Szoboszlai and Virgil van Dijk added gloss to the scoreline with two quick-fire goals in the final stages, ending Spurs' hopes of booking a Wembley date against Newcastle United.

Spurs failed to have a shot on target throughout the whole game – the first time that's happened during Postecoglou's reign – and their performance was panned by television pundits and across social media.

Postecoglou was asked in his latest news conference how many transfer windows may be needed for Spurs to get near to Liverpool's level, but the former Celtic boss suggested it was unwise to assess things when he's still dealing with so many injuries and has just played a team that's won 29 games out of 37 this season.

"I know that this is all kind of reactive to last night and I get it. Everyone saw there was a big gap between us and Liverpool, but Vicario, Romero, Destiny, van de Ven, Solanke, Wilson Odobert, I could go on and on," he said. "We had 10 missing last night, senior players but you take seven or eight key players out of any team and you are playing the best team in the world who are at their best, I don’t think you make judgements in these moments.

"I get that it dulls the senses after a while when you say the same thing week after week and it sounds like it is what it is, but that’s the reality of our situation. A lot of the players I mentioned and Maddison, I mean Brennan Johnson, I don’t make judgements on last night apart from the fact we didn’t perform in the manner we wanted to. Even if we did, we may not have won anyway but the disappointing thing is we just didn’t play the way we wanted to, so we need to address that.

"It was a disappointing night for us, a disappointing night for the club. Disappointing night in terms of the opportunity we had. I said after the game we didn't really perform to the levels we needed to. Liverpool were too good for us."