Brendan Rodgers hails “excellent” Christian Benteke after opening Liverpool
Elphick headed home but Craig Pawson ruled out the goal even though it appeared fair.
Brendan Rodgers claimed not to have seen either incident.
Premier League new boys Bournemouth suffered a 1-0 defeat to Liverpool on Monday night, however, the main talking point from the match was the controversial goal scored by Christian Benteke. We were sat down by the referees and told the new offside rules. “We know the qualities we have and we know as players find fitness at this stage of the season and get more game time, our game will become better”.
The Belgian, bought for £32.5million from Aston Villa in the summer, scored his first goal for Liverpool in front of the Kop – although it shouldn’t have counted as Philippe Coutinho was in an offside position.
“It’s a yard and a bit offside and he (Coutinho) has clearly impacted on the goalkeeper”.
Rodgers said: “I thought Benteke was a real handful tonight, you saw a lot of the facets of his game”. On one hand I am very proud of the players’ performances and how they were fearless enough to go toe-to-toe with Liverpool.
Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe has said that he wants feedback from the officials about the decisions they made. But while the rule can be confusing at times, this was probably the clearest opportunity a referee will have to enforce the new interpretation.
Players have previously been allowed to be in offside positions if they were not an “active” part of play; to be offside a player had to touch the ball.
Liverpool went close in the fourth minute when Jordon Ibe lashed a strike just wide after Jordan Henderson’s ball back towards the area from a cleared corner dropped perfectly for him.
Christian Benteke brushed aside the controversy over his first Liverpool goal to reflect on a satisfactory home debut.
“At our managers’ meeting it was said that the advantage was looking to be with the team attacking”.
“The offside ruling was changed again and it adds confusion”.
“I haven’t seen the replay, but it is a goal”.
“It is really frustrating”. “I got up ahead of Lovren, obviously you have to use your arms as leverage. We pride ourselves on our back-line”.