Despite VAR trying to aid Liverpool's porous defence on Sunday, Klopp was critical of the new system after what he deemed was a failure by the ref to add on more injury time at the end of their first half encounter with West Brom.
In a surprising turn of events, Klopp pointed the finger of blame at BT's coverage, making a thinly veiled dig at the sports broadcaster for supposedly influencing the referee's decision not to add more time at the end of the half:
What I heard was that the actual extra time in the first half should have been 10 minutes. It was only four minutes. I heard that television said it’s not longer than four minutes. Of course that’s not possible, you can't cut match time because there is something else to broadcast. I don’t know what was afterwards, maybe the news or something. It was 10 minutes and so you need to play 10 minutes longer. You cannot say its now a little bit too long.
While the criticism seems to be borne more from frustration than real conviction, it didn't stop BT Sport presenter Jake Humphries from rebuffing in on the German's accusation:
Laughable. Not only would we accept any amount of injury time, we had no need to rush of air...it’s also impossible for us to influence such a decision. https://t.co/hQ4Cj43L7m
— Jake Humphrey (@mrjakehumphrey) January 29, 2018
It was a peculiar point to bring up from the German (seeing as his team had conceded in first half stoppage time), and while it seems unlikely that BT is the official puppet master of the FA Cup, the lack of additional time is yet another one of the concerns surrounding the implementation of VAR, and will surely be used as one of the many sticks to beat it with over the coming weeks.
