Neil Warnock condemns Salah’s Liverpool penalty as simulation: ‘A 9.9 Tom Daley job’

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp branded the Cardiff City Stadium pitch as dangerously dry as his side overcame Cardiff to move back to the top of the Premier League table.

Liverpool’s manager revealed he ordered his own groundsmen to leave their training pitch grass long and dry in preparation for a match which moved them back two points ahead of Manchester City, who have a game in hand.

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Klopp, who made the same complaint when Liverpool threw away a two-goal lead against West Bromwich Albion last season, was hugely critical of the state of the surface for such a crunch tie for both clubs.

“Dry pitches are dangerous for players injury-wise,” Klopp said, after Giorginio Wijnaldum and James Milner goals gave them three points. “If you run and stop in a moment it [injury] can happen. You know why people leave a pitch dry — I don’t have to say that.

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“The ball doesn’t roll that quick. If you ask footballers what do you want they will say a wet pitch, you can slide better, everything.

“I spoke about it at West Brom and was told I was a sore loser. This time we were prepared. We learned from our mistakes in the past.

“It doesn’t make football easy when the pitch is that dry, it is dangerous as well. You have to stay patient and calm, you have to stay 100 per cent on set pieces.

“We trained on a bone dry pitch to get used to it.”

Response

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Cardiff manager Neil Warnock, whose side remain three points behind Brighton in 17th but now with a game less to play, dismissed Klopp’s claims, saying: “It was watered before the game, so I don’t understand. Unless the groundsman thought there was a hosepipe ban, but as far as I’m aware it was watered before kick off.”

Warnock was adamant that his defender Sean Morrison was pulled back when he missed an open-goal header, although Klopp claimed the referee told him that his goalkeeper Alisson had been fouled beforehand and it would not have stood anyway.

Warnock was also damning of the penalty Mohamed Salah won against Morison. Morison clearly had his hands all over the Liverpool forward, but Warnock said: “That was a 9.9 (dive) Tom Daley job.”