Liverpool's Andy Robertson leaps to Mohamed Salah's defence after diving accusations

The Egyptian has won three penalties for Liverpool in the their past four games

Andy Robertson has leapt to Mohamed Salah‘s defence after the Liverpool star had been plagued by accusations of diving and insisted that the Egyptian is “not that type of player”.

Jurgen Klopp’s side have been awarded a penalty in each of their past four games – three of which resulted from fouls on Salah – with an alleged dive against Newcastle coming under particular scrutiny after Rafael Benitez labelled it as “soft”.

Salah was again accused of diving in Liverpool’s 5-1 thumping of Arsenal on New Year’s Day before being clearly fouled by Pascal Gross in the Reds’ 1-0 win over Brighton on Saturday.

Leaping to his teammate’s defence, Robertson said:

“He’s not that type of player. Every time it happens then we go back and everyone looks at the video and you go, ‘well, it’s not a dive’ so how many times is it going to happen?

“I’m not sure if the Brighton players did say it was a dive or not and I’ll need to see it back but I was at the edge of the box and for me it was a stone-waller.

“If people are starting to say Mo has gone down easily it’s not fair because the one against Arsenal, especially, he got clipped three times on his way down and they still appealed it so it’s a bit of desperation.

“I’ve not seen this Brighton one back but it’s a no-brainer really for the referee.”

Liverpool stretched their lead at the top of the Premier League table to seven points, although Manchester City can close the gap on Monday evening when they host Wolves at the Etihad.

Andy Robertson said Mohamed Salah was not the type of player who dives (Getty)

Despite lacking their usual lustre, the Reds’ gruelling win against Brighton resumed their title charge after suffering a first defeat of the season to Manchester City.

“The two Brighton games have been massive for us because we have not been at our best,” Robertson continued.

“When we played them at home we weren’t at our best and they probably had a few more chances and we won 1-0. And then on Saturday we did the exact same.

“It’s that winning mentality. Whoever wins the league will look back on some games and go ‘do you know what, we probably weren’t at our best there, and that was probably one that helped us turn one point into three or zero into one’.

“So there will be games over the season and whoever does that will probably have three or four games to look back on and if we manage to do it, I’m sure we’ll look back on this game as one of them.”