How former Chesterfield boss Lee Richardson is helping to ease anxiety for Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool

The 51-year-old, who played and managed the Spireites, took on the sports psychologist role at Anfield last November.

Richardson has created a ‘Mental Health & Wellbeing’ document, according to the Daily Mail, to help Liverpool’s players concentrate on what they can only control.

Jurgen Klopp’s men are 25 points clear of second-placed Manchester City with nine games to go but have been made to wait to be officially named champions because of the pandemic which has halted all top flight football until at least April 30.

“What happens with the decision of the Premier League or the direction the virus takes next is out of our control,” the document states.

“All we can control is our behaviour and our response to the challenge of keeping the most vulnerable safe and minimising infection rates.

‘In focussing on the controllable and in accepting that which we cannot control, i.e. Premier League, government response, we give ourselves the best chance of overcoming the psychological challenge of keeping perspective. As the manager has said, football is not the most important thing. The health and safety of us all is far more important.”

Richardson’s advice focuses on breathing techniques to ease their anxiety.

Richardson, who managed Chesterfield between 2007 and 2009, said: “As you know, good regular teeth-brushing promotes good dental health and in the same way good regular diaphragm breathing promotes good mental health.”

Speaking about Richardson in November, Klopp said: “With Lee Richardson especially, the good thing is he was a player himself, a manager himself and then he decided to become a sports psychologist. It is a really interesting career, he's a fantastic person, which is important because then I don't have to convince the boys to talk to him. It’s easy.

“He is a really, really interesting person and so the boys enjoy, for sure, that he is around and when you need him, you can use him.”