Eddie Smart has been criticised for appearing in a selfie with Spurs players minutes after the controversial end to last night’s 2 – 2 draw at Anfield. The Assistant Referee awarded an injury-time penalty to the visiting side after Virgil Van Dijk appeared to fell Erik Lamela.

Limelight

“I love the limelight,” Smart told Soccer on Sunday. “I didn’t get into refereeing to be a wallflower. I want to decide games and grab headlines. I’d rather get a big call deliberately wrong and be plastered all over the back pages than have a quiet game. No ref will tell you different. We all meet for a pint after the game and cry laughing about the dodgy calls we’ve made on purpose. People think we’re cock-eyed nerds, but we’re actually just cunts.”

“Of course, it doesn’t hurt that I’m a massive Spurs fan,” added the official. “People say you should be impartial, but I prefer to be a 12th man. I’ve developed a good partnership with Kane — sort of like Mahrez and Vardy. It’s almost telepathic.”

Violence

Jürgen Klopp feels that the FA needs to allow more violence towards the men in black.

“There is too much protection for officials,” he told Soccer on Sunday. “If the FA say, ‘Ok, you are allowed to smash a linesman over the back of the head with a baseball bat once, maybe twice a game? Then the officials will know that their lives are in danger and improve. I could have caved Mr Smart’s skull in after the first dodgy peno, and there would have been no second. Of course, his wife would not be happy to be a widow, but that’s football.”