After one of the games of the Premier League season finished with a 94th-minute winner, the collective Liverpool mood should have been a celebratory one. Yet as Jurgen Klopp faced the media to give his post-match reaction after that pulsating 4-3 win over Tottenham on Sunday, the atmosphere was tense.
It's possible that Klopp's disposition had been darkened by the hamstring injury he was nursing after pulling up in celebration of Diogo Jota's last-gasp and scarcely believable winning goal. Or perhaps, as is more likely, the lion's share of the frustration had come from another unwanted interaction with Paul Tierney, the referee who had booked him for his overzealous celebrations in the face of fourth official John Brooks around half an hour earlier.
"We have our history with Tierney," Klopp told Sky Sports shortly before facing the wider media inside Anfield's press room. "I really don't know what he has against us. He has said there [are] no problems but that cannot be true? How he looks at me, I don't understand it. In England nobody has to clarify these situations, it's really tricky and hard to understand. What he said to me when he gave me the yellow card is not OK."
