The Liverpool boss was upset with a number of things after a fightback was required twice to secure a road point in the 2022/23 Premier League season opener. One of his issues was with the pitch, which he deemed “dry.”
Fulham took the lead in the first half following a fantastic team move that resulted in Aleksandar Mitrovic bullying Trent Alexander-Arnold at the back post to nod home.
A Darwin Nunez goal and assist either side of a Mitrovic penalty eventually saw the spoils shared on the opening day of the Premier League season.
MORE: Updated Premier League top goalscorers list for 2022/23 season
What did Klopp say about Fulham’s pitch?
The Liverpool boss was extremely damning of his side, telling BT Sport: “The best thing about the game is the result. A really bad game.
“How can that happen? The attitude was not right in the beginning. We tried to react after 15 minutes. The pitch was dry, stuff like this. Really difficult. The result is fine, we don’t deserve more than that but the performance is massively improvable.”
In fairness, Klopp pointed the finger mostly at his own players, going on to say that the players deserve plaudits often, but after today, that was not the case.
“We cannot always hug the boys. We do that usually when they deserve it,” Klopp said after the match.
“The first half, we started the game opposite to how we wanted to. We didn’t find direction, and everybody was under pressure. We couldn’t break the lines. There was a clear message before the game, that what we have to do is take risks. We lost balls, and each challenge they won, each chance, each shot, is big for them.
“We never had momentum. We could have won the game, we had the bigger chances, but that probably would have been a bit too much.”
How did Fulham respond to Klopp’s claim?
The morning after the match, the Fulham Twitter account posted a photo clearly aimed at the Liverpool boss and his post-match comments.
“The Craven Cottage turf looking absolutely lush yesterday” the club posted on social media, with a photo of the pitch being covered with sprinklers.
The point for Fulham gets the promoted side off to a good start, hoping to secure safety a season after winning the Championship title.
What excuses has Klopp made in the past?
Klopp is known for having a moan when results don’t quite go his way. The weather features prominently in this, with the wind, the snow and even the heat having been blamed previously.
He also claimed that his goalkeeper Alisson had suffered from ‘cold feet’ in a defeat against Manchester City in 2021 during which the Brazilian made two costly errors, and even blamed the size of the stadium when visiting Real Madrid in the Champions League in 2021.
Premier League 2022/23 TV channels, live streams
USA: Select matches are televised on USA Network (English) and Telemundo or Universo (Spanish), and all three channels can be streamed on fuboTV. The rest of the matches are streamed on NBC platform Peacock for subscribers.
Canada: Every Premier League game streams live and on demand exclusively via fuboTV.
Australia: Fans in Australia can stream matches live and on demand on Optus Sport.
