Jurgen Klopp believes refereeing decisions have not been going in Liverpool’s favour in recent weeks after his side crashed out of the EFL Cup on Wednesday night.
The Reds lost their League Cup semifinal tie with Southampton 2-0 on aggregate, with their fate sealed when Saints striker Shane Long netted a stoppage-time winner in the second leg at Anfield.
Klopp insists Liverpool were denied a certain penalty late in the second half when Long appeared to handle the ball.
He then said there was another fair shout for a spot kick as Divock Origi went down following a challenge by Jack Stevens.
Speaking at a news conference after the Southampton defeat, Klopp cited the build up to Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s recent equaliser in the 1-1 draw with Manchester United as another example of his side having bad luck with officials.
“In the game it looked for me like a penalty,” the Reds boss said of the Origi incident. “But the handball was clear. Long played a clear handball.
“Look, maybe it’s not interesting and I don’t look for excuses or anything, but it’s really hard to accept week by week, week by week. It’s really hard.
“In one of the biggest games against Man United, everybody told me that he was two or three yards offside and nobody really speaks about it.
“Do I have to speak about it? Is it my job to get a fine afterwards? But today the handball, for me, was obvious — 100 percent obvious.
“Then it’s the next situation but nobody comes and says: ‘I didn’t see it or whatever.’ The show must go on and it’s the next game again.
“But how I said, we had a lot of offside goals against us, which should not have been allowed and [a] really rare handball. That’s how it is. It doesn’t feel good.
“That’s two situations that would have been enough — two penalties, [James] Milner [scores] and it’s 2-0 and we don’t talk about anything else.
On his side’s display against Claude Puel’s well-drilled outfit, Klopp added: “The performance was absolutely OK.
“We created the chances. For me, as a coach, it’s very important the way we chose to create and it was absolute OK.”
Liverpool have won just one game since the turn of the calendar year — an FA Cup third-round replay away at League Two Plymouth Argyle.
The Reds are now 10 points adrift of Chelsea in the Premier League title race and sit fourth in the table, having spent periods of November on top.
Klopp insists there will be no hangover from his side’s patchy form of late, and believes they are still on the path to success in the future.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “If we would doubt the way we are on after these little problems we had until now then it would be a really strange thing.
“We don’t have the points we want, we don’t have the results we want. That’s not a problem, that’s how it is.
“We know what we have to do and we know what we want to do. We know about the football we want to play. That’s all good.
“There are times when it didn’t happen, but tonight it was a really good performance in difficult circumstances.
“We did good, I’m fine with this. But of course, we’re disappointed at being out.”
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