Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp believes that his side would have struggled to beat a 10-man Manchester City team following their chastening 4-1 loss to the Premier League champions at the Etihad.
The Reds suffered a third defeat in a row across all competitions to Pep Guardiola's men, despite going a goal up during a bad-tempered first half.
Liverpool players were up in arms when Rodri - who had just been booked a couple of moments before - brought down Cody Gakpo on the break, as Klopp's men screamed for the Spaniard to be given his marching orders.
A sea of red shirts swarmed around referee Simon Hooper, but the official kept his red card in his pocket as the 11 men of Man City came out a different beast in the second half with three unanswered goals.
Klopp was understandably asked about the challenge from Rodri on Gakpo in his post-game press conference, but the abject German does not believe that a red card would have made any difference to the result, having only seen "four-ish" players perform adequately on the day.
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"Could he have gotten a second yellow? Probably. He won't get it now. I don't think we would have won today against 10 men to be honest," Klopp told reporters.
"I said to the players that there was nothing from my side to say tonight. It's obvious. Tomorrow we will talk about it. We play Tuesday and we should play better. More consistent.
"Four-ish players had an OK game and the rest were somewhere - I don't know. In general - how we lost everything - unacceptable."
Liverpool exposed an open City backline to draw first blood through Mohamed Salah in the first half, but City soon began to turn the screw and were level 12 minutes later through Julian Alvarez.
It took just 52 seconds for the hosts to turn the tie on its head following the restart through Kevin De Bruyne, and Liverpool offered nothing in the way of a response during a meek second-half performance, as Ilkay Gundogan and Jack Grealish also contributed to the rout.
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Elaborating to BT Sport, Klopp admitted that City were able to do "whatever they wanted" against his woeful crop, and the Liverpool boss could not take any positives away from a miserable Manchester afternoon.
"We were so open. Wow. City could do whatever they wanted. We were lucky City were not in a greedy mood," Klopp added.
"There is nothing good to say about this game. This is a game we have to use unfortunately and make clear which things cannot happen. We cannot not have challenges in key areas or be that open. Now I stand here and have to explain it but I cannot explain it.
"I cannot change it now, here, I can just report what I saw and we will talk about it tomorrow. These things happened too often."
Liverpool's defeat left them sixth in the table on 42 points, but they will drop down at least one place by the close of Brighton & Hove Albion's battle with Brentford, with both teams sat level on points with the Reds.
Next up for Klopp's side is a trip to Chelsea on Tuesday evening.
Ben Knapton
