Tottenham Hotspur's hopes of heading into the weekend's Premier League fixtures at the top of the table were dealt a late hammer blow on Wednesday evening as they were beaten 2-1 by Liverpool at Anfield.
After Son Heung-min had cancelled out Mohamed Salah's deflected opener, Spurs looked poised to return to north London with a point in the bag, as well as maintaining their residency at the summit.
However, Jurgen Klopp's side were to snatch a dramatic 90th minute winner when Brazilian striker Roberto Firmino powered a header home from an Andy Robertson corner.
That late goal took Liverpool to the top of the table and three points clear, meaning the pressure is on Jose Mourinho's side to get back to winning ways when they welcome Leicester City to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday afternoon.
Following the full-time whistle on an emotional night at Anfield, which saw both sets of players wear black armbands in memory of former Liverpool boss Gerard Houllier, who passed away earlier this week at the age of 73, both Mourinho and Klopp were captured having an exchange of words on the touchline, with the latter grinning from ear to ear as Mourinho spoke to him.
Though the TV cameras were unable to detect exactly what the pair were saying to one another, Mourinho soon revealed what he had said to his managerial counterpart in a TV interview.
“I told him the best team lost and he disagreed, but that’s his opinion," Mourinho told Amazon Prime Video. "By the way, if I behaved the same way on the touchline like he does, then I have no chance of staying there and I’m out for a minute. That’s animated?
"Do you want me to take the fourth official board from his hands and see what happens to me? For some reason, I am different.”
Had Firmino not struck so late on, Spurs would have returned home with a respectable point in bag. However, Mourinho believes that even a draw would have been an unfair outcome for his side, insisting his players deserved to win.
He added: “So close to winning, not so close of a draw, so close to winning, but we missed the chances. We had the chances, we had the game under control.
"A draw would be a bad result in relation to the performance, so you can imagine how we feel in relation to the result. A very good performance, of course, with some mistakes and some things to improve. A very unfair result."
Though Mourinho felt his players, who have now failed to win each of their last two matches, deserved to win, Liverpool right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold has taken a very different viewpoint, hitting back at Mourinho's comments in a sarcastic manner.
The England defender, who played an important role in the Reds' Premier League title charge last season, took to Twitter to send a simple message in Mourinho's direction.
On Twitter, the defender wrote: "Best team won." Alexander-Arnold accompanied those three words with a smiley emoji, almost goading Mourinho and telling him, in a round about way, to be quiet.
Alexander-Arnold and Liverpool will now be aiming to push on and aim to build on their three-point advantage over Spurs, starting with Saturday lunchtime's visit to Crystal Palace, who have proven they can compete with the best that the Premier League has to throw at them, having beaten Manchester United and held Spurs to a draw already this season.
With that in mind, Mourinho will now be hoping that Palace can return the favour and stop Klopp's men in their tracks.
