Friday, March 29, 2024

Pulis offers sarcastic apology to Klopp as long-ball row rumbles on

West Brom boss Tony Pulis offered a sarcastic apology to Jurgen Klopp after the Liverpool manager accused his side of only playing long balls.

Klopp refused to shake his counterpart’s hand following last weekend’s tasty 2-2 draw at Anfield.

In the aftermath of the fixture, Klopp stated that West Brom “only play long balls” and that he did not embrace Pulis because “it was not a friendly game”.

However, Pulis believes the German was merely frustrated that Liverpool’s expensively assembled squad failed to win the match and argued the statistics showed little difference between the amount of long balls each team played.

“I’m really sorry and apologise now to Liverpool Football Club for playing three more balls over the top than they did – and that stat is courtesy of Sky Sports. Maybe he should take notice of that. It’s disappointing,” Pulis said.

“If I had a team that was worth £200million playing against a team that was worth less than £20m and we never won that game, I’d be doing my best to divert it away from the fact that I had 10 times more value on the pitch than my opposition number had and couldn’t win the game.

“I’m just stating the facts. Forget all the spin, that’s the facts.”

Pulis now wants to draw a line under the affair, but could not resist one last dig at Liverpool as he stated Saturday’s encounter against AFC Bournemouth is a trickier fixture.

He added: “I don’t know the fella [Klopp], I don’t want to say anything else. They were the facts.

“We’ve got a big game on Saturday, a game that we think will be more difficult than the Liverpool game.”

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