Jürgen Klopp has issued a scathing attack on Gary and Phil Neville in which he questioned the former’s credentials as a television pundit given his ill-fated four-month spell in charge of Valencia.

Klopp accused the former Manchester United pair of promoting an anti-Liverpool agenda in his latest defence of his under-fire goalkeeper Loris Karius. The 23-year-old has attracted criticism over unconvincing displays against Bournemouth and West Ham United in which Liverpool have dropped five points to fall six behind the league leaders, Chelsea.

The Sky pundit Jamie Carragher led condemnation of the Germany Under-21 international following Liverpool’s 4-3 defeat at the Vitality Stadium. Karius, while accepting criticism from the former Liverpool defender, took Gary Neville to task in a newspaper interview on Friday for voicing similar sentiments. The dispute has intensified, with both Neville brothers reacting to Karius’s interview over the weekend and Klopp biting back on Monday.

Liverpool’s manager made no mention of Carragher’s criticism, although he did so immediately after the Bournemouth defeat, but accused the Nevilles of seeking to disrupt United’s fierce rivals and criticised Gary’s time as Valencia’s head coach.

“It is part of our life,” Klopp said of the Karius criticism. “First of all my job is to protect the players as much as I can but I am not in the pitch so I cannot go with them. Criticism from outside is normal, for me, the players, the goalkeeper. I am not surprised about it. In my very first press conference I spoke a little bit about the English media. Obviously most of you enjoy this harsh part.

“The pundits, former players most of them, forgot completely how it felt when they got criticised. Especially the Neville brothers; the one who was the manager he obviously should know that too much criticism never helps. But he is not interested in helping a Liverpool player, I can imagine, but that makes the things he says not make more sense. He showed he struggled with the job to judge players so why do we let him talk about players on television?

“I don’t listen to them. I am pretty sure Carra doesn’t speak too positively about Man United players. Obviously the Neville brothers don’t like Liverpool. I have no problem and if they can cause bigger problems than we have already they have tried. By the way, you can tell him [Gary] I am not on Twitter so if he wants to tell me something Twitter doesn’t help.”

Phil Neville had taken Karius to task for publicly criticising his brother Gary. “Keep your mouth shut, do your job, go home, have your tea and play football,” Phil told the BBC’s Match of the Day 2.

Klopp declined to discuss the performances of Karius, a £4.7m summer signing from Mainz, who made his 10th Premier League appearance on Sunday having replaced Simon Mignolet as the Liverpool manager’s first-choice keeper.

“Whatever I would say about this would create headlines,” Klopp said. “The good things, the bad things, and I am absolutely not interested in creating headlines so you can write what you want. There is nothing to say about it. A few things are obvious, a few things are not obvious, a few things are the truth, a few things are not right but that is too much for me to think about.”

The Liverpool manager also refused to confirm that Karius would retain his place for Wednesday’s Premier League visit to Middlesbrough. “No answer for this,” he said. “Everything I say creates a story. If I say he plays, it’s this, if I say no, it’s this. There is absolutely no answer. Nothing has changed in terms of what I say in public. What I have to say to my players that is not for public. That’s the problem – for you, not for me.”

Emre Can will miss the trip to the Riverside Stadium because of a knee-ligament injury suffered in training on Friday and that forced him out of the draw against West Ham.

Dejan Lovren is a doubt having been withdrawn at half-time on Sunday as a precaution against a possible hamstring problem and Daniel Sturridge, although back in training, remains sidelined as he recovers from a calf injury.