Pulis hits back at Klopp over West Brom’s ‘long ball’ style

REUTERS – West Bromwich Albion manager Tony Pulis has hit back at Liverpool boss Juergen Klopp’s assertion that they are a “long ball” side after their touchline spat in last weekend’s 2-2 Premier League draw at Anfield.

Klopp wildly celebrated Liverpool’s stoppage-time equaliser in front of Pulis and the pair had to be separated.

The German, who said West Brom “only play long balls”, was also angered by a Craig Gardner tackle on Dejan Lovren which has put the Croatian defender out for a month.

Pulis said Klopp’s comments were “disappointing”.

“He’s got his opinions and he can say what he wants. We apologise we actually played three longer passes in 99 minutes than Liverpool did in that game,” Pulis told reporters on Friday.

“If I had a team that was worth 200 million pounds ($298.38 million) playing against a team that was worth less than 20 million 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.”

West Brom, in 13th place, host Bournemouth, one place below them, on Saturday.

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(Reporting by Shravanth Vijayakumar in Bengaluru; editing by Justin Palmer)