Gary Rowell: Give your head a shake, Jurgen Klopp

I could not fault Sunderland for effort, they gave everything and were always in the game right up until injury time when James Milner’s penalty killed us off.

Jurgen Klopp said Sunderland were the most defensive team he’s ever faced, which I find hard to believe, as Steven Pienaar had the best chance in the first half blocked by the Liverpool keeper while Duncan Watmore, with a better first touch, might have even won it for the Black Cats with a great opportunity when the game was still goalless.

Both individually and as a team, Liverpool are far better than Sunderland –you just have to look at the table to see that.

So being defensively organised and get men behind the ball is a perfectly reasonable tactic in those circumstances.

Plenty of other teams at the bottom and further up the table will use those exact same tactics against Liverpool as Sunderland did, so Klopp should get used to it.

Saying all that, Liverpool were certainly the better team and full deserved all three points.

But I can think of plenty of other matches early in the season when if Sunderland had shown half the defensive resilience they did at Anfield we’d be further up the table with more points than we have now.

Losing at Anfield is no disgrace, the Reds may even win the Premier League title this season as they are just one point off the top.

Therefore, the defeat should not affect the confidence and morale of both players and fans even though we have gone back to the bottom of the table.