Brighton 1-1 Liverpool: Jürgen Klopp's reaction
Jürgen Klopp offered his assessment of Liverpool’s performance following a 1-1 draw with Brighton & Hove Albion on Saturday.
An eventful afternoon at the Amex Stadium saw the hosts squander the chance to take a first-half lead when Neal Maupay slid a penalty wide of the post.
At the other end, Mohamed Salah had an effort ruled out by the VAR for offside prior to the break; nevertheless, Diogo Jota’s fine run and finish gave the Reds the opener midway through the second period.
Sadio Mane then had a header chalked off by the video assistant referee, but the visitors maintained their advantage heading into stoppage time.
However, play was halted when the VAR reviewed an earlier challenge by Andy Robertson on Danny Welbeck inside the box and, after referee Stuart Atwell consulted his pitchside monitor, Brighton were awarded a second spot-kick.
This time Pascal Gross converted, ensuring the Seagulls took a share of the points.
Read on for a summary of Klopp’s post-match press conference at the Amex Stadium…
On the second penalty given to Brighton and the two Liverpool efforts ruled out for offside…
My analysts told me Mo was offside – very close, a very small margin, like the toe or whatever. Sadio obviously with his upper body, I didn’t see it, I heard that. But that sounds like twice offside, even when it was close. But well played, good play, all these kind of things. The second penalty is a penalty because the ref whistled it. There was a contact and when the ref thinks it’s enough, then we cannot change that obviously. That’s the situation.
On Jota’s ninth goal of the season and the impact Jordan Henderson had in the second half…
I liked the first half as well. Of course, they had a bit more offensive situations because we had to adapt, we had to learn actually in the game. When you analyse Brighton, Brighton play football against each team, has a playing build-up against each team. Against us they obviously shoot the balls long, that’s OK. That was a little difference. Then, with Connolly up front they played pretty early balls in behind. How I said, this last line played now the first time together so they needed to adapt. After 20, 25 minutes we did that, we controlled that. The Connolly chance was a big one, all the other situations Ali sorted. So, I liked the first half as well. And, of course, when you have Hendo on the pitch that always helps, absolutely. We scored a goal and couldn’t score the second one. OK, scored a lot more goals but they were disallowed and couldn’t score a second one which would have been allowed. Then the penalty came, that’s how it is.
On whether Thiago Alcantara or Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain could return against Ajax or Wolverhampton Wanderers…
I don’t want to tell Ajax and Wolves too much, but I don’t think so.
On the five substitutes rule…
Look, if it would be about me then I would have never mentioned it, but it’s about the players and each moment when it would happen, it would be good for the players. Brighton lost two players with muscle injuries and they play one game a week. The most difficult time is coming up now. For Sheffield United as well, by the way. We will see. I can explain it one last time: in this period we are now in, five subs is not for tactical changes. And if ever one coach has the luck to use it for tactical changes, that would be the exception. Today we made an early sub at half-time, then we made a second sub and then we thought really if we are brave and [will] make the third sub. If you are not brave, you have to wait with the third sub until the 90th minute pretty much because until then when they show up five more minutes, for example, you can say, ‘OK, if we change now then probably nothing will happen, or we are only three or four minutes with 10 men.’ If we would have had five subs today then Andy Robertson I would have taken off, 100 per cent; I had Kostas Tsimikas on the bench, so he can play 15/20 minutes. So, we don’t have a lot of options in the moment – we have, but they’re all offensive – so you can just bring them all through the season. It’s not the solution, but it’s a little help. That’s all. Whatever Chris Wilder says, I don’t speak only about Liverpool – he speaks only about Sheffield United, that’s true. He admitted that in the managers’ meeting, but I speak about football players.