Jurgen Klopp claims Liverpool would not allow him to use Jose Mourinho's negative Manchester United tactics

Jurgen Klopp claimed Liverpool “could not play” as defensively as Manchester United after their dreary 0-0 draw at Anfield on Saturday.

The German’s side were frustrated by a brilliant David De Gea save from a Joel Matip close-range effort and then a second-half Emre Can miss, in a match of few chances. Klopp put that down to how Jose Mourinho set up.

“Manchester United came here for a point and got it,” he told Sky Sports. “For sure you could not play this way at Liverpool but it's OK for Manchester United.”

Klopp later tempered his comments slightly when talking to written press, stating that he was not “judging” United.

“I said it was obvious they made a more defensive approach. That was obvious but that is completely fine so it looked to me that they wanted a point if they can get three they will take it. Of course but we wanted three, they are happy, we are not happy.

“We were dominant, it is a home game for us so we should be dominant. I am okay with the performance it is not my job to judge the MU performance.”

In something that has become a bit of a theme of the season, Klopp did get a little snappy when asked a question, in this case whether Liverpool created enough chances. The German also said they should have had a penalty for an Ander Herrera foul on Philippe Coutinho and an extra man due to Romelu Lukaku appearing to flick an ankle at Dejan Lovren.

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“Maybe we didn’t create enough chances but the problem is that in everything you ask is always underlined with negative. That is how it is with our situation. If we had won the last five games… today we created enough chances to win the game, we should have had a penalty, maybe a red card but we didn’t. You can write whatever you want.

“We have to stay positive and for me it is easy because the performance gives me enough reasons to stay positive, absolutely the boys performed again, learned a lot from the last game.”

Klopp also felt it was worth pointing out that his side kept a clean sheet for the first time since the 4-0 win over Arsenal on 27 August.

“We protected our offensive situation perfectly against one of the best counter attacking teams in the world. [Henrikh] Mkhitaryan if you don’t protect him he runs from here back to Manchester with the ball and Lukaku we defended well. [Anthony] Martial, [Marcus] Rashford, [Ashley] Young, we really did well. That was all good.

“Was it perfect? Probably not otherwise we would have won. We had the big chance plus a penalty, it’s 2-0. Which result do you want against Manchester United. There are not a lot of games where they sleep 90 minutes and you can do whatever they want. They defended with nine players in and around the box.

“That’s completely okay, I don’t judge this, it just makes our job a little bit more difficult but we still came through, we played football, we had shots, we had crosses. Crosses to the first post when no one was on the first post. Crosses to the second post when no one was on the second post.”