Jurgen Klopp was left seeing red on Monday, despite his Liverpool side pulling off a much-needed 1-0 win over Manchester City to keep their faint title hopes alive.
A Mohamed Salah goal proved the difference, but it was a different play involving Salah that saw Klopp lose his mind, and ultimately his place on the sideline.
With Liverpool up 1-0 in the 85th minute, Salah appeared to be pulled down by Bernardo Silva, only for play to continue with neither the sideline referee or Anthony Taylor in the middle of the park seeing a foul.
Klopp couldn’t believe it, barking at the sideline ref as he made his way past him. That reaction was enough for Taylor to make his way to the German manager, and brandish a red.
“I went over the top in the moment,” Klopp admitted after the game. “I don’t think it was disrespectful to anybody. But I know myself, and the way I look in these moments is already worth a red card.
“Who cares what I say? But I lost in the moment and that’s not OK.
“But as an excuse, I’d like to mention, how can you not whistle that foul? How on earth is it possible? And I wish I could get an explanation.”
Klopp said both he and Pep Guardiola were in disbelief at some of the refereeing.
“During the game he [Guardiola] agreed completely that Anthony Taylor just let things run. Why would you do that? Both teams,” Klopp said.
He added: “Pep and I were really animated. But actually for the same reason, to be 100 percent honest. For the same reason. We were not arguing with each other.”
Guardiola said his City team were punished for making a mistake in a game of “fine margins”.
“This is Anfield — every time you come here lately unfortunately this is Anfield,” he added.
“We played a really good game but this is a game where there are really fine margins and the mistakes are punished. We made a mistake and we cannot concede and that’s why we lost the game.
“We played to beat Liverpool today, definitely we played for that. After 1-0 the crowd shouted but we shouted more on the pitch.”
City thought they had snatched the lead early in the second half through Phil Foden but VAR spotted a foul by Erling Haaland on Fabinho in the build-up and the goal was disallowed.
“The referee said played on, played on, played on, there were a thousand million fouls like this and this one is because we scored a goal,” said Guardiola.
“So they disallowed because we scored a goal, otherwise it would not have been disallowed. We lost because we make a mistake but this is Anfield.
“The crowd tried (to throw coins and objects) but they didn’t touch me. Maybe next time they will be better.”
