Jurgen Klopp has escaped an FA fine despite criticising Andre Marriner and questioning Manchester United’s penalty record.
The German made the comments after his sides 1-0 defeat to Southampton on Monday evening. Klopp felt his side should have had a penalty in the first half when Sadio Mane went down after a collision with Kyle Walker-Peters.
Liverpool’s goalless performance led to only their second defeat of the season and United, who are level on points with a game in hand, now have a chance to go ahead.
Annoyed by the decision, Klopp claimed Marriner did not handle the Mane moment properly. Not stopping there, the Reds boss also questioned United’s large number of penalties. Across the 2018/19 and 19/20 seasons United were awarded 11 more penalties than any other team in the league.
But despite his comments, Klopp will face no action, according to reports.
“We had a really good view of it [the Mane incident], and it looked like a clear penalty,” said Klopp at full-time. “I turned around to the fourth official and asked if it was going to be checked, he said it already had been and was not a penalty. That’s 100 per cent true, and now someone wants to tell me how quick they had it in all these different angles.
Last year, there was a penalty against Leicester when people said Sadio Mane goes down too easily – if he goes down easily, we would have had a penalty in this game and the last game, a stonewall penalty, but what Andre Marriner did with Sadio Mane I’m not sure if that’s okay.
The boy tried everything, had a few great challenges with Walker-Peters. But there were a lot of situations which should have been free-kicks. The last one, when he goes down, you see that back and in the box he hits him in the end with his left foot, that’s a penalty.
“We cannot change. I hear now that Manchester United had more penalties in two years than I had in five-and-a-half years. I’ve no idea if that’s my fault, or how that can happen.”
Managers can be punished for their post-match comments, but the FA say “provided they are not personal in their nature, imply bias or attack the integrity of the officials in charge of the match, or in any other respect bring the game into disrepute.”
Despite Klopp questioning United’s number of penalties it seems his comments were not strong enough to warrant any action.