Jurgen Klopp passionately spoke with the media after the draw with Tottenham Hotspur and placed a large amount of blame on Paul Tierney for our failure to win the game.
After the match, our manager came out with the bold statement of: “I have really no idea what his problem is with me, honestly I have no idea”.
Despite being clearly and understandably upset, it’s unlikely the German would make a statement like this without any evidence to back it up and so here’s a look at some former decisions that could cause the boss to believe the ‘problem’ of the 40-year-old is personal.
Firstly, January 2017 saw a Divock Origi goal harshly disallowed by Tierney in a game that finished 0-0 and went to a replay against Plymouth Argyle.
In December of that year, Jurgen Klopp confronted the official at the end of the game after he disallowed a late Dominic Solanke effort despite initially giving the goal.
Our boss took to the media after the game to label the handball “difficult” and the lack of proper injury time as “a harsh decision … like they’re happy it’s over“.
April 2019 against Southampton contained a decision not to give Naby Keita a penalty following a clear foul from Maya Yoshida.
Playing against Bournemouth in March 2020, Callum Wilson put his side ahead after a clear push in the back on Joe Gomez that wasn’t given.
In September of the same year, a red card was missed for Chelsea’s Andreas Christensen but thankfully VAR was able to correct his decision.
January of this year saw an inexplicable blowing for half-time against Manchester United whilst we were on the break with six seconds of the period remaining.
These all come after a quick look back at games Tierney has been in charge of as referee and don’t include any VAR decisions he has overseen.
Jurgen Klopp has a 61% win rate at Liverpool, scoring an average of 2 goals per game in each match.
When playing with Tierney as referee, the stats are: 55% win rate, scoring 1.6 goals.
Having a worse win rate, scoring less goals and being able to quickly and easily spot 11 mistakes in the 18 games does add some weight to our manager’s claims that there is a personal problem of the referee and our club.
The point of this article isn’t to be pedantic, rather to show that the man in charge of our club would not make an unsolicited claim and the evidence above clearly illustrates that.
Fouls, indirect free-kicks and match-fixing: Liverpool vs. Inter Milan 1965
Clearly more business for Spec-Savers. Maybe Tierney has shares in said company, even if he does not make use of their services!
The focus on Tierney, allows the performance of Manchester’s Chris Kavanagh (VAR) to go unnoticed. Absent when Sir Harry of England commits a near horror challenge, then uber keen to involve himself to get the yellow card changed to red for Robertson. It would be interesting to see the stats around his involvement in Liverpool matches.