Sunderland manager David Moyes has responded to the criticism from his Liverpool counterpart Jurgen Klopp, who called the Black Cats, "the most defensive team [he] ever saw", following the Reds' 2-0 victory over Moyes' men on Saturday.
Former Everton boss Moyes, as reported by theLiverpool Echo, defended his plan to frustrate Klopp's side, which the Scotdescribed pre-match as "parking a double-decker bus" in order to stifle the Reds' attacking threat.
MOYES: "Anybody who plays against Liverpool has to park the double-decker bus, but we also have two centre forwards scoring goals."
"We don't have the same quality as Liverpool," Moyes remarked, when informed of Klopp's assessment of his side's style of play at Anfield.
"I knew we had to come here and defend. [Liverpool] won here 6-1 the other day so we didn't want to come here and get rolled over that [easily].
"I was at the Euros all summer and I saw a tournament like that. A tournament of big teams having to play against team who shut up shop and made it difficult to get through. It's a big part of modern football now - it can't always be one-way [traffic].
"I hope soon I can come with a team that can give Liverpool an open game. At the moment, I don't have the team to do that," the Scot continued.
Jurgen Klopp on Sunderland: "This was the most defensive team I ever saw in my life."
Seasoned Everton observers may remark on how Moyes set the Toffees up negatively at Anfield on most occasions, even when the two sides were comparable in terms of quality.
Moyes also explained his plan to get on-loan Manchester City defender Jason Denayer to man-mark Liverpool talisman Philippe Coutinho, before the Brazilian went off with aninjury caused by a collision with Didier N'Dong.
"We put [Denayer] on Coutinho and man-marked him to try and nullify. My job was not to come here and entertain the Anfield crowd, my job was to come here to try and get a result for Sunderland. We had to try and do that. We didn't do that, but we tried hard to," Moyes remarked.