Liverpool extended their winless run to three games on Monday as they were beaten 1-0 by a resilient Southampton side.
A stunning flick from Danny Ings put Southampton ahead after just two minutes, and though Liverpool pushed for an equaliser, they never really came close to threatening Fraser Forster and lacked the quality needed in front of goal.
Here’s what manager Jurgen Klopp had to say after the game, including some real bait for what appears to be Premier League title rivals Manchester United…
Klopp was frustrated to see Liverpool not given two second-half penalties, with referee Andre Marriner choosing not to whistle for a Kyle Walker-Peters tackle on Sadio Mane or a potential handball from Jack Stephens.
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Klopp told 90min.com “If anybody ever again will say Sadio Mane is a ‘diver’, it’s the biggest joke in the world,” Klopp told Sky Sports. “This boy tries to stay on his feet with all he has. In two situations…other teams will get a penalty for it, let me say it like this. Then the handball, I don’t know who will explain that to me.
“We had a really good view of it [the Mane incident], and it looked like a clear penalty. I turned around to the fourth official and asked if it was going to be checked, he said it already had been and was not a penalty. That’s 100% true, and now someone wants to tell me how quick they had it in all these different angles.
“Last year, there was a penalty against Leicester when people said Sadio Mane goes down too easily – if he goes down easily, we would have had a penalty in this game and the last game, a stonewall penalty, but what Andre Marriner did with Sadio Mane I’m not sure if that’s okay.”
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“We cannot change. I hear now that Manchester United had more penalties in two years than I had in five-and-a-half years. I’ve no idea if that’s my fault, or how that can happen.
“But it’s no excuse for the performance. We cannot change it, we have to respect the decisions. But we can change our performance. That’s our focus now.”