Eiraola: We feel a great disappointment, and we deserve two penalties

Andoni Iraola, the manager of Liverpool, criticized the refereeing decisions during the defeat against Arsenal by a goal to nil in the 9th round of the Premier League at Anfield.

Iraola stated in comments reported by Sky Sports: "Regarding the incident with Alexander Isak specifically, Gakpo was subjected to continuous pulling, and I can understand that, but Isak's situation was a clear penalty. The defender held his shirt, and everyone can see that clearly. Because he didn't fall to the ground, the referee didn't award the penalty. I don't understand this decision."

Regarding whether Alex should have gone down in the penalty area after being pulled down inside the box, he said: "This is the problem we face in football. Because he didn't exaggerate the fall and didn't throw himself to the ground. Just the fact that you ask me whether he should have gone down highlights the issue; if he falls to the ground, the referee will give a penalty 100% of the time. Things are supposed to be different, but this is the reality. Next time, coaches should ask Alex to go down in the area, otherwise the referee won't give the penalty."

Will you ask Isak to do that in the upcoming matches? Yes, definitely.

The manager stated: "We feel disappointed with the result. We certainly deserved to score, but we couldn't do that. We regret the first 15 minutes, until we conceded the goal, but I was very impressed with what we showed afterwards. We made some changes and became bolder and more aggressive, and we managed to put the opponent under pressure. We had some chances, but we didn't capitalize on them and finish them as we should have, and Arsenal put in a good defensive performance."

He continued: "There are many positives, but they were not enough against teams of this level. We had some very good chances inside the penalty area, but we did not manage to finish them correctly. However, I really appreciate the way we played after conceding the first goal."

He concluded: "It's hard to talk about things going in the right direction after the loss, especially since we were coming off five consecutive wins. This match was extremely important for us, and so we feel a great disappointment."