Jurgen Klopp slams Aston Villa’s ‘offside’ goal following win at Villa Park

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has slammed the decision to not rule Aston Villa’s opening goal offside despite it ultimately not affecting the outcome of the match.

Klopp’s men came from behind to win 2-1 at Villa Park on Tuesday evening but it’s something the Reds boss believes they should have never have had to do.

Douglas Luiz opened the scoring after just three minutes on the night for Villa and whilst there was no problem with Luiz in the goal, striker Ollie Watkins was active in an offside position during the build-up.

It’s the classic new-era argument of when does a phase of play end and a different phase of play start but the German manager clearly felt that the Brazilian’s goal should never have stood.

“I think it was offside,” Klopp told Sky Sports.

“If you think I only speak about these things when we lose because it’s just a problem and we have to solve that.

“It was an obvious offside situation that just played on. Ok it was a little bit later, what, three passes? But we were under pressure in that moment and it didn’t relieve that - 30 yards in front of our goal.

“But today, it’s not important, I mean in general we could really think about how we can solve that.”

Klopp added that he was pleased with how his team reacted to going a goal behind, especially defensively due to the ‘quality’ that Villa’s front two of Watkins and Danny Ings provide.

“The response, really good, 1-1 and it was clear we had to keep going, we had to dig deep,” he said.

“Aston Villa had obviously moments but again, offside here, offside there and they had one or two moments where we had to defend their centre-halves in our six-yard box because of the quality of Ings - unbelievable - and Watkins, these kind of things that’s really tricky but yeah we did it and I’m really proud of the boys.

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