Jurgen Klopp played down the on-field argument between James Milner and Virgil van Dijk after Liverpool lost 2-1 at Manchester United on Monday night.
The Reds fell behind for the seventh successive Premier League game when Jadon Sancho rolled the ball home after flooring Milner with a dummy inside the area.
Marcus Rashford doubled the advantage in the second period before Mohamed Salah's header reduced the deficit inside the final 10 minutes - but United held on for three points.
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Following the opening goal, vice-captain Milner could be seen in a heated debate with centre-back Van Dijk as the pair clashed over who was at fault for United's first. Klopp, though, said such disagreements are part and parcel of the game as he reflected on a first league defeat since late December.
Klopp said: "I realise now there were some things on the pitch, like players shouting at each other and stuff like this. I was a football player myself. Nobody is happy after a loss, that is completely normal. This is not an explanation or an excuse or whatever, it is all fine in this department."
On the decision to leave Fabinho on the bench in favour of starts for Milner, Jordan Henderson and Harvey Elliott, he added: "We have at the moment five senior midfielders and we have to start with three. We could start with two if we had more attackers but we start with three and then we change them in a game. And it is like how we want to start and how we want to change during a game. That is the only reason for it. It's not the story of the game, just a decision for this game."
Klopp also dismissed talk of an argument with United captain Bruno Fernandes after an incident involving substitute Fabio Carvalho and defender Lisandro Martinez, who the Reds boss accused of exaggerating a push to run the clock down late on.
“It was not animated. It was the most harmless conversation I ever had, with a player who is as emotional as I maybe was!" Klopp said.
“It was the situation with the centre-half, Martinez, when he went down with an ‘awful’ tackle [from Carvalho] which was obviously nothing. He [Bruno] was talking to me and said ‘you would do the same’, but I said no, I cannot fall like this. It was all fine after the game, he told me he needs these kind of conversations during the game and so I said fine, use me!"
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