Jurgen Klopp launched into a furious rant after Liverpool slipped to defeat against Brentford, accusing the Bees of “stretching the rules” in their 3-1 win.
The Reds came into the match on a four-game winning run in the Premier League but were comfortably beaten by Thomas Frank’s side. An own goal from Ibrahima Konate and a strike from Yoane Wissa had Brentford 2-1 up before Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain pulled one back.
Liverpool pushed for an equaliser but had their defeat confirmed when Bryan Mbeumo got the better of Konate to score the home side’s third goal. Klopp was angry in his post-match interview and, while he accepted his team’s performance was poor, he lamented the officiating.
"Of course, I’m not 100 per cent happy, I will have to watch it back again and again because the two corners where they scored, one of them was offside or whatever it was, and then the other one of course we don’t behave perfectly,” he told Sky Sports.
"But they are stretching the rules in this moment, they are pushing, holding and everything and the refs, that’s obviously what you can do, that’s why it’s really difficult and we could have done better.”
Klopp has been Liverpool manager since October 2015, so this is far from his first complaint-filled post-match rant. Here Mirror Football takes a look at some of his finest whinges.
Dry pitches
One of Klopp’s most frequent bugbears is under-watered pitches. Liverpool opened their season with a 2-2 draw against Fulham at Craven Cottage, with the home team’s grass preparation aiding their performance, according to the Liverpool boss.
Klopp told BT Sport: “We got a point from a really bad game from my side so now it’s a question of ‘How can that happen?’ The attitude was not right in the beginning and then we wanted to fight back but it wasn’t easy any more. The pitch was dry, stuff like this, we played really in their cards most of the time.”
It was not the first time he had used that excuse. In April 2018, Liverpool surrendered a two-goal lead to West Brom in a 2-2 draw at the Hawthorns.
“It was a difficult game, especially after the pitch got drier and drier,” Klopp said, recycling an excuse he used following a draw against Southampton the previous year. “We had the ball constantly and it’s not so easy. It was quite difficult. I was not happy with the pitch.
“You never played football, obviously. It makes a massive difference. If you’re like West Brom, the ball constantly in the air, you don’t need a wet pitch. That’s how it is and we have to deal with that. They can do it next year, playing with a dry pitch in the Championship.”
The weather
Two months after Klopp arrived to take the Liverpool job, he explained one of the main differences between the English and German game.
“There is a different style of football here, partially due to the weather,” he said. “The wind can be quite extreme in England. We are not familiar with that in Germany and you have to keep things simple. Players who are not from the UK have to get used to the winds. I have to adapt my style of football as a result as well.”
Despite his awareness of the climatic conditions, his Liverpool side have still fallen foul of them on occasion. The wind of Merseyside is a particular annoyance, “You just cannot play football in this heavy wind,” Klopp said in February 2021 after Everton won 2-0 at Anfield.
“The wind was coming from all directions” back in March 2019 during another derby defeat. . “The wind didn’t help” in an FA Cup defeat by Wolves in January of that same year, either.
Liverpool drew 1-1 with Leicester in January 2019, when snow was the problem. “You saw that the ball didn’t roll, really,” he said. “If you then have the ball pretty much for 70 to 80 per cent of the time it makes life really uncomfortable.”
Broadcasters
Perhaps the most frequent of Klopp’s subjects to moan about. Des Kelly could command his own section, with the Liverpool manager clashing over and over again with the BT Sport interviewer. But his unhappiness with the broadcaster actually goes back much further.
Back in January 2018, he was raging at BT Sport for apparently influencing the amount of added time in a FA Cup defeat by West Brom.
“What I heard was that the actual extra time in the first half should have been 10 minutes,” he said after being dumped out of the FA Cup by the Baggies in January 2018. “It was only four. I heard that television said it’s not longer than four minutes.” The allegation was categorically denied by the match director.
Klopp has frequently bemoaned the brutal fixture schedule his players have to navigate, with early kick-offs on a Saturday particularly aggravating. In November 2020 he congratulated Kelly personally after James Milner picked up a hamstring injury against Brighton.
The Liverpool boss thinks his side get a raw deal, because their matches are selected for broadcast more often, which sometimes means shorter turnaround time between games.
Cold feet
In February 2021, Liverpool were beaten 4-1 by Manchester City. Reds keeper Alisson did not enjoy a good day at the office – but Klopp still tried to make excuses for his player.
“In the second goal he just miss-hit the ball,” he said. “There’s no real reason, maybe he had cold feet. It sounds funny but could be.”
New balls please
Liverpool cruised to the Premier League title in the 2019/20 season, but crashed out of the FA Cup against Chelsea. The difference between the two competitions? The ball.
While the Premier League used the Nike Merlin ball, the FA Cup used a Mitre creation. It didn’t go unnoticed.
“The first goal, we lose a ball, what was it 18 or 19 yards in front of the goal?” Klopp said after the 2-0 defeat. “The specific characteristic of the ball and Willian’s shooting technique made life really difficult.”
