Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool were narrowly defeated last night by Manchester City in a thrilling return to club football for the two biggest rivals in England.
Liverpool were second best, with goals from Haaland, Mahrez and Ake securing Manchester City’s place in the next round of the league cup, ending Liverpool’s defence of one of their domestic title victories from last season.
Klopp was interviewed after the game and he made his feelings known about some of the referee and linesmen’s decisions during the game.
“The first chance of Haaland, at the start of the game, was offside,” Klopp said in his post-match interview with Sky Sports. “You don’t know? Yes it was. I tell you. That gives the game direction. It was like, bump, ‘oh my god, they are through’, it was offside, but no flag up, and it gives you a bad feeling”.
“I would say if we had VAR, the referees are used to VAR, and all of a sudden you tell them not today. It looked like in a couple of situations they were waiting for it, or thinking there was still VAR”.
“But there were a couple of offside decisions, where everyone in the stadium was convinced they were offside. We’ll never know probably because we can’t play them back”.
“But it makes sense if you play a competition and everywhere is VAR [Premier League], why not, especially in a game like this. I understand in earlier rounds it’s not possible on all levels, but this, City-Liverpool, all the technical things are here, so why shouldn’t we use it?”
Klopp did not alleviate responsibility for the defeat from his team however, criticizing his teams defending.
“We should defend all three goals much better. Third goal especially, we are not switched on when they start their little routine. We were not in the right position, not enough players watching the ball. But we had our moments”.
Klopp’s team had positives to take away from the game, looking threatening on the counter, with Carvalho and Salah netting two lovely goals from transitions. Liverpool supporters will hope for a more dominant performance against Aston Villa on December 26th in the Premier League.
See our player ratings for last night’s game here.
