Jürgen Klopp refused to accept his team selection and substitutions had cost Liverpool victory in the Merseyside derby after he left Philippe Coutinho and Roberto Firmino on the bench and withdrew Mohamed Salah before seeing Everton pinch a point with a late penalty.

“I was really happy with the performance of the team,” the Liverpool manager said. “The attitude of the boys was outstanding, they were all ready to play football against an Everton side who had come to defend deep, and we controlled the game apart from one situation. Unfortunately that situation decided the game, but that is what we must accept.”

Jordan Henderson and a couple more Liverpool players waited to speak to the referee, Craig Pawson, about that situation at the final whistle, unhappy with his decision to award a penalty against Dejan Lovren, and Klopp too said he felt the official had made a mistake.

“I didn’t think it was a penalty, did you?” the manager said, inviting a show of hands in the press room. More hands went up than not, even in the Anfield press room, which left Klopp to reflect on the first rule of politics – never ask a question to which you do not know the answer. “OK, obviously you all thought it was a penalty,” Klopp said, a little sheepishly. “I thought [Dominic] Calvert-Lewin just stepped inside him at the last moment. There was no push, just body contact.”

Wayne Rooney penalty earns Everton unlikely derby point at Liverpool Read more

Predictably that was not the way Sam Allardyce saw it, although in this instance the Everton manager did appear to share the same view as the majority of observers, including the referee. “I’ve had a good look at it and Lovren raised his hands,” Allardyce said. “He had no need to do that, I don’t think Dominic was going anywhere, and I think it was very brave of Craig Pawson to make the decision in view of the number of years since Everton were last awarded a penalty here. You can call it soft if you like, I don’t have a problem with that, but these days you can’t put your hands on an opponent in the box. Don’t mess with him, don’t touch him, don’t shove him.”

Allardyce also defended Everton’s ultra-defensive tactics, which were not pretty to watch but ultimately secured a point which continued an unbeaten run under their new manager. “I was pleased with the way we defended, we restricted the best attacking team in Europe to three shots on target,” Allardyce said. “I don’t actually think it would have made much difference had Coutinho and Firmino played from the start, we defended that well. You can’t knock our defending, because we still had to keep Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane quiet, but I must admit we still have a lot of work to do to get better when we are in possession. We still have five players to come back from injury, and that should help, but the ball from Wayne Rooney that led to the penalty was one of the few good passes we managed all afternoon. When Liverpool attack they often leave the two centre halves on their own and if you can get the right ball in you have an opportunity. We only managed it once but it won us a precious point.”

It also gave Rooney the opportunity to score his first derby goal. “We nicked a draw in the end but we deserved it,” the Everton captain said. “It is easy to go away from a game plan when you are 1-0 down but we knew that at 1-0 there is always a chance, so we stuck to it. I had to walk over to get the ball to take the penalty because Lovren had kicked it way. All I was thinking was ‘you can’t miss this’, because it was such a big moment in the game. I am delighted with the result. We have made ourselves hard to beat again, and that’s what we needed to do.”