Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp will serve a one-game touchline ban for his public criticism of referee Paul Tierney after the Reds beat Tottenham 4-3 in the Premier League last month.
He will be suspended for a second game should he commit any more infringements between now and the end of next season.
Klopp implied bias from Tierney against Liverpool owing to a ‘history’ between the pair, having been shown a yellow card for celebrating in the face of fourth official John Brooks following a late Diogo Jota winner in a game against Aston Villa in March.
“We have our history with Tierney, I really don’t know what he has against us,” Klopp told Sky Sports.
“He has said there [are] no problems but that cannot be true. How he looks at me, I don’t understand. In England nobody has to clarify these situations, it’s really tricky and hard to understand. What he said to me when he gave me the yellow card is not okay.”
Pep Guardiola escaped a suspension for comments he made about a referee before a Manchester derby in 2018, but Klopp isn’t alone when it comes to high profile Premier League managers getting touchline bans for things said about referees.
5. Jose Mourinho – 1 game (2016)
Jose Mourinho was suspended for one game in November 2016 during his first season at Manchester United, the result of confronting Mark Clattenburg at half-time of a 0-0 draw with Burnley. Around the same time, he was separately fined £50,000 for comments made about Anthony Taylor ahead of a clash between his United side and Liverpool.
On other occasions, Mourinho was fined £10,000 while Chelsea manager in 2014 for comments about Mike Dean after a defeat to Sunderland – long-serving assistant Rui Faria ended up with a six-game ban for confronting the referee on the pitch after that same game.
In 2015, he got a £50,000 fine and a suspended one-game ban, having suggested that Robert Madley was ‘afraid’ to give Chelsea a penalty in a home defeat to Southampton.
4. Harry Redknapp – 2 games (2003)
During his stint as Portsmouth manager, Harry Redknapp was banned from the touchline for two games after criticising referee Andy D’Urso and raising his complaints with fourth official Lee Mason.
“I just questioned the referee’s overall performance, which I thought was inept,” Redknapp said. “I didn’t shout or abuse the referee, I just passed a comment to the fourth official. 99% of fourth officials would have said ‘I agree with you’ or ‘Sit down, Harry.’ I think he was a young guy probably trying to make a name for himself.”
In 2010, while at Tottenham, Redknapp managed to avoid a ban, having threatened he would no longer do post-match interviews, for comments made about Mark Clattenberg.
3. Mauricio Pochettino – 2 games (2019)
Mike Dean said of then Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino in a post-match report in 2019: “He wouldn’t stop saying ‘you know what you are, you know what you are’. I asked him to explain and he repeated ‘you know what you are.”
The game was a Tottenham defeat to Burnley and Pochettino reacted angrily to what he believed was an incorrect decision to award a corner from which the Clarets scored.
2. Arsene Wenger – 3 games (2018)
“You’re not honest…you’re a disgrace,” were the words that came out of Arsene Wenger’s mouth in the direction of Mike Dean after an Arsenal game against West Brom on New Year’s Eve 2017.
The Frenchman was so incensed by the late penalty awarded to West Brom that he later barged into the officials changing room to confront Dean.
Wenger missed three games at the start of 2018 and was £40,000 lighter.
1. Sir Alex Ferguson – 5 games (2011)
Legendary former Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson ended up with a five-game ban following his criticism of referee Martin Atkinson off the back of a defeat to Chelsea in 2011.
“You want a fair referee, or a strong referee anyway, and we didn’t get that. I must say, when I saw who the referee was I feared it. I feared the worst,” Ferguson said at the time, incurring an FA improper conduct charge.
The Scot was barred from the touchline for three games for those remarks. But the reason he had to serve five games was because the FA tacked on a two-game suspended ban from 2009 after openly questioning the physical fitness of referee Alan Wiley.