If anyone was still unaware that these are the end of days for Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool, his riotous performance at Friday’s press conference will have given the game away.
Klopp mused without restraint on a number of topics that included a potential job as FIFA president one day, saying “I probably wouldn’t survive in that sea of sharks”, why a lack of player welfare is hurting English football in Europe and, most interestingly of all, the unprompted broadside at TNT Sport, a TV channel he claims he will “definitely never watch again”.
As public addresses go, Klopp held court with the same sort of energy as Father Ted Crilly, using his Golden Cleric award as an opportunity to belatedly settle a few scores. “And now we move on to liars…”
It suggests the next few weeks will be appointment viewing when Klopp addresses the media but among the headline-grabbing soundbites and the humorous interactions, there was a searingly honest take on Tottenham Hotspur that suggests Liverpool might finally be able to snap out of their end-of-season malaise this weekend.
With a heavy reference to the reverse fixture at the end of September, when anything that could go wrong did, Klopp said: “I don’t want to make it the biggest subject, but I can’t forget the Tottenham as well, it’s just a fact.
“It was just strange. Only the other night, in the Merseyside derby, the first time Tottenham [referee] Simon Hooper was standing next to me for 90 minutes in a game I didn’t enjoy in the first place and I tried to get it out of my head and couldn’t.
“And now we play Tottenham, and that was obviously was not their fault, they just played the game, but I would like to win that game for 500 reasons, that we lost the way we lost is one of them.”
For clarity, it’s worth recalling that the 2-1 defeat at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium saw two men controversially sent off in Curtis Jones and Diogo Jota, Joel Matip scored a stoppage-time own goal and, most shockingly, the Reds were on the wrong end of the worst VAR-related gaffe for years – and arguably ever in the Premier League – when Luis Diaz opened the scoring before the Stockley Park mix-up failed to properly communicate that the finish should stand.
That an objective goal was not registered on the scoreboard was far more egregious an error than any subjective penalty call, handball decision or sending off. Perhaps only the failure of goalline technology to award Sheffield United a goal at Aston Villa in June 2020 compares as a fundamental failure of the tools that are supposed to aid officials. Good process indeed, boys.
It should have been a watershed moment, particularly when it was revealed in the fallout that Premier League officials were incredibly allowed to moonlight for fixtures in the Middle East just days before the weekend’s games and Liverpool’s plan to “explore the range of options available” in the immediate aftermath could – and should – have led to a collective demand for improvements across the board.
Instead, managers of other teams ducked the issue – Vincent Kompany and Ange Postecoglu, most notably – clubs buried their heads and everyone became prefixed with simply looking after their own interests rather than calling for better performances from those in charge.
Apologies from PGMOL chief Howard Webb, like the one he reached out to give Liverpool in the aftermath, do nothing but inflame the situation further, particularly to supporters who see no ice cut from such gestures.
Months on from the Diaz decision, little has improved and clubs like Nottingham Forest are still being left baffled by some of the calls made against them. Their labelling of Stuart Atwell as “a Luton fan” after the three denied penalty shouts at Everton was a poor way to articulate their frustrations, but the general point of a season blighted by terrible refereeing and re-refereeing is a fair one.
