Jermain Defoe’s 2 pens put Sunderland within a point of safety

Liverpool led twice in Mondays contest at the Stadium of Light in Sunderland, but Jermain Defoe converted two penalties to earn a point for the hosts, now in 18th place.

The Reds twice had an advantage in the contest through goals from Daniel Sturridge and Sadio Mane, yet were ultimately made to share the spoils after Jermain Defoe converted two penalties.

Klopp walked onto the pitch at the Stadium of Light at the end to give referee Anthony Taylor his opinion, particularly of the free-kick awarded to Sunderland which led to the 84th minute equaliser. The second was clear handball.

Liverpool stay second in the table but Manchester City are now just two points behind them after they won on Monday. Both decisions are right but it feels bad. If the Chosen One wanted to get all uppity about that, he could justifiably turn on the water works, but who cares, really? But to get two! “But obviously I have to accept it, so I will”.

Klopp was asked as to what he thought about the penalty decisions and the German chose to give the journalist a piece of his mind regarding the legitimacy of the penalty decisions. You can talk about rest after this game, with FA Cup action to follow, but that makes no difference to the game at Sunderland.

“It was a very hard 90 minutes, I have no real idea because I know we can play better football but I’m not sure we could have today because we played two days ago”. It could be because of the fixtures, I’m not sure.

He continued: “Jason felt his hamstring in training on Friday and we had it scanned but there was nothing on it, so we have to hope it’s not long term. Sorry for my mood”.

After beating Monday’s opposition 2-0 back in November, Jurgen Klopp sarcastically claimed that he had never played such a defensive side before.

“For me, it was especially hard [the result at Burnley]”, he said. I honestly thought today the players raised the supporters by the way they got up to Liverpool, how they put them under pressure, how they pressed them. Instead, I have to chalk this up to one of those one off’s that you run in to throughout the course of the season.

Asked if he had any sympathy with Klopp he demurred. “He should see what it’s like at the bottom of the league. We need to say, “We need you”.