Klopp fumes at VAR after Reds given short shrift
An angry Jurgen Klopp had two reasons to leave Goodison Park fuming after VAR cost his side the chance of victory in a Merseyside derby in which two key players sustained potentially serious injuries.
The Liverpool manager was furious Jo r d a n He n d e r s o n’s added-time goal to make it 3- 2 was ruled out for the tightest of offside decisions on review, while he was at a loss to explain how Jordan Pickford had not been dismissed and conceded an early penalty for a knee- high challenge on Virgil van Dijk.
That tackle ended the Holland captain’s afternoon and Klopp admits the injur y is “not good”, while the challenge which did result in a red card being shown to Richarlison also appears to have put Thiago Alcantara on the sidelines.
Van Dijk and Thiago both went to hospital for scans on their respective knee injuries after the game.
“It is not good. Virgil played I don’t know how many games in a row, he plays with pain, but he couldn’t play on and that’s not good,” said Klopp.
“When I leave the pitch Thiago tells me in the Richarlison red card situation he thinks he got injured.
“Then coming into the dressing room, people are standing around with a laptop and I say: ‘ What’s wrong?’ and they say ‘ We have watched it back and we don’t understand why it is offside’.
“I am a real supporter of VAR – the picture I saw there is no offside.
“We lost one player in a situation where VAR was not involved with Virgil and maybe another one in the red card situation and scored a legitimate goal which didn’t count – so not our day, but the performance was one I wanted to see.”
Everton boss Carlo Ancelotti, who saw his leaders’ 100 per cent start to the season ended as a 10- year, 23- match winless run against their neighbours was extended, was happy with the display.
“We could win, draw or lose. I am not talking about the result, the performance was good,” he said.
“We wanted to compete and we did really well with good spirit. We never lost confidence, we were able to equalise two times, we had opportunities to go up with Richarlison hitting a post.
“The performance was satisfying.”
Despite another error of judgement by Pickford, Ancelotti refused to criticise his goalkeeper, who did redeem himself with three decent saves in the game.
He added: “I think he played a good game, like the others. Good saves, he was focused in the goal.”