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Just in case anyone was wondering.
Penalty disputes are all the rage in the Premier League right now.
First we had the arguments at Manchester United. Paul Pogba misses a penalty after Marcus Rashford scores. Rashford takes the following spot kick and misses. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer insists the club do not have one taker. If you’re reading this website, chances are you found the whole thing very funny.
Then there was the Chelsea issue. Ross Barkley comes off the bench and takes the penalty over Jorginho and Willian. He misses. Frank Lampard insists Barkley is his first choice taker. Everyone argues. Great content.
Now there are people trying to draw Liverpool into this mess. But the boss is having none of it.
‘The rule for us is Milly [James Milner] is the taker”, the Daily Mail report Jürgen Klopp as saying. “When he is not on the pitch, Mo [Mohamed Salah] is the taker.
“We would probably think about it if both were not on the pitch but so far it’s not happened.”
He went on to talk about general penalty etiquette, adding that “You can say it should be the guy who feels the best but the thing is the one who takes the ball isn’t probably that guy, and that is when the discussion starts. The others around think “do we really feel he should take it!”
“Of course it can happen, we are all human beings, but I am not a big fan of that.”.
Honestly, as long as there’s no issue among the players, I’m not sure the penalty taker matters that much. Liverpool are in a fortunate position where we have plenty of players who could take one if the time came. Fabinho, for example, was a regular taker at Monaco but doesn’t seem favoured by Klopp.
Other clubs are squabbling over this, but relax. Liverpool know what they’re doing.
