'We all see what Klopp did' - David Coote defended as national media react to Liverpool controversy

It was shaping up to be just a usual first Monday of the international break. And then the proverbial hit the fan.

In a matter of hours, the emergence of a video in which Premier League referee David Coote used disparaging language against Liverpool and their former boss Jurgen Klopp prompted an investigation to be opened by the Professional Game Match Officials Limited and the Football Association before the former suspended the official pending the outcome.

Such an unusual and in some ways shocking situation has unsurprisingly prompted plenty of pondering from the national media. And here's the best of what they had to say.

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Writing in the Guardian, Paul MacInnes pointed to the problem Coote's indiscretion has now generated.

"He let himself down, he let the game down, but he’s also chucked a whole scuttle’s worth of coal on to the flames of conspiracy," he scribes. "In the present day, fantasising about how the powers-that-be are biased against your team is a popular way of filling the hours between matches.

"Not just fans either, as Nottingham Forest proved with their public rant against Stuart Attwell which eventually resulted in a £750,000 fine being handed down by the FA. Everyone’s at it, and often without anything more than a hunch to go on.

"Now, thanks to Coote, those fears can be underwritten. If someone suggests it’s fantastical to think that a referee would allow personal animus to influence their work as a professional, you need only point to this two minutes of idiocy by way of rebuttal.

"This is living, breathing proof of what referees actually think, you might say if you were already the sort of person who is infuriated by them. Why would I give them the benefit of the doubt again?"

Martin Samuel of The Times believes Coote is done as a Premier League referee but then suggested the official was effectively right in his potty-mouthed assessment of Klopp.

"Coote can be banished in a finger snap," he pens. "Harder is admitting that he had a point. That all referees, given enough liquid truth serum and the mistaken belief that what they are saying stays strictly confidential, would come to a similar conclusion.

"Not about Klopp or his nationality, necessarily. But about someone. A manager, a group of players, the assistants on the bench, even an entire club. How does any rational person think referees feel about their standing in the modern game? Coote’s recollection of 90 minutes in the company of Klopp and his backroom staff will not be an outlier.

"As brilliant as he was, we could all see what Klopp did and how he behaved. Those fans seated directly behind the Anfield dugout could no doubt hear it too. Yet we all ignore it. Liverpool supporters were outraged by Coote’s observations, while offering few thoughts on cause and effect.

"Yet replace the words 'Jurgen Klopp' with 'Jose Mourinho' in that outburst and many would no doubt be arguing that the Portuguese places officials under intolerable pressure and this was a human reaction. It is not an adult conversation that we have around referees. It is shot through with club bias, distrust and irrationality — all the prejudices referees are accused of holding."

And Ian Ladyman in the Daily Mail was another to highlight the issues now facing Coote's peers.

"Match officials from the Premier League down to the blokes with tea towels for flags on the Sunday mudflats will feel the ramifications," he says. "The consequences will be theirs to suffer.

"Referees and their assistants will always make mistakes. They all whistle when they shouldn’t and fail to spot things that they probably should. But deep down we forgive them their human frailties, their misjudgments, their occasional failures to spot what appears obvious.

"We do that because we presume they are honest, we know they are regularly being conned by the players in their charge and we presume they are doing their very best to get difficult calls right.

"In short, we expect our referees to whistle without prejudice. We presume all games begin with a blank canvas, without a vested interest and, ideally, with an absolute and utter ambivalence to what the outcome is.

"Because without that one basic tenet, we do not really have a refereeing system and without that we really do not have a game. Coote has threatened all that. He has placed that in jeopardy."