Moyes speaks up for angry Klopp
DAVID MOYES is pleased to be pitting his wits against Jurgen Klopp tonight after defending the Liverpool manager.
Klopp was sent off during the 1-0 win over Manchester City for berating assistant referee Gary Beswick after a foul was not given for a challenge on Mo Salah. The German has been hit with an FA charge but will not be banned for the West Ham clash.
Hammers manager Moyes has told referees they need to understand the pressures on Premier League managers.
He said: “First thing I’ll say is that I hope he is in the dugout opposite. Jurgen is up there with them all with what he has done for Liverpool over the years. His actions are part of it, we are really het up. We have all got great respect for referees.
“I hope in their way they will understand that, for 90 minutes and a bit longer we might lose our heads a little bit.
“But if we stood there and did nothing our fans, the public, the media, would probably be questioning why not? Look at the incident he got angry about. He was correct, wasn’t he?”
Moyes believes the flare-up could have been a ploy by Klopp to whip up his players. He said: “Jurgen is a huge personality and, he might have had to take a sending-off to get his team a result, because he was showing everyone how much it meant.
“Over the years there is probably no person who has done that more than Jurgen.
“I admired how Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger could sit back and be really controlled, even if they approached the touchline at times, ‘Fergie Time’ and doing other things.
“Then you look at Antonio Conte, Jose Mourinho over the years, there was a different style of management. I remember times when I was a young manager and I think what a d*** I must have been jumping up and down. Jurgen was fighting for his team to get a result. I’ll probably do it again in the future.”
Klopp struggled to sum up how big the win was, but is urging his team to build on it.
He said: “My English is not good enough to express how important it was. Very. From all different perspectives. It was the performance we needed, the way we had to defend, the way we had to commit. It was massive.”
The result came at a cost, though, with Diogo Jota ruled out for several months with a calf injury, ending the Portugal forward’s World Cup hopes.