Roberto Firmino headed a 90th-minute winner as Liverpool beat Tottenham Hotspur 2-1 at Anfield on Wednesday to open up a three-point lead at the top of the Premier League table over the London club.

Liverpool have 28 points while Spurs are now second on 25 points with both teams having played 13 games. Southampton and Leicester are both on 24 points.

Mohamed Salah had put Liverpool ahead before Son Heung-min levelled for Spurs in the 33rd minute and while the home side dominated it was the visitors who had the best chances after the break.

But Firmino’s powerful header from a corner ensured a victory for Juergen Klopp’s side, leaving Jose Mourinho empty-handed, and the Spurs manager felt his side had deserved all three points.

Klopp believes Tottenham will be in the battle for the title right until the end.

“They will be top of the table until the end of the season because they are really good. But to play against them is a proper challenge and to play like us, is pretty special,” said the German.

“It was a top game, (we) deserved the three points against a top side, organisation-wise so difficult to play against them with the counter-attacking threat they have. So, I liked the game a lot,” he said.

“Of course Tottenham had chances, I know that they scored a goal and an unbelievably tight offside decision. They had other chances.

“But we stayed concentrated, protected our attacks sensationally well, counter-press was good, passing was good,” he added.

Asked about what appeared to be a testy exchange with Klopp after the final whistle, Mourinho said: “I told him the best team lost. He disagreed. That’s his opinion. By the way, if I behaved the way on the touchline like he does, I have no chance to stay there — and I’m out after a minute.”

In a separate interview to the BBC, he later said: “Everything is fine between us. The referees let him behave the way he does. It’s not my problem. I feel sad for it because I can not do it but it’s just the way it is.”

Added Mourinho: “So close to winning, but we missed the chances, we had the game under control, a draw — would be a bad result so you can imagine how we feel with a defeat,” he said.

The Tottenham manager brushed off talk of his team being title contenders but said they had to learn how to finish off their opponents in big games.

“I think the first thing that makes title contenders is to go to every match to win it, with that ambition.

“I promise you that the ambition is there. If in any match you see us not trying to win it, it’s not because we don’t want to... it’s because the opponent pushes us to different situations.

“You have to kill matches of this dimension. You have to just kill it. The game was there. We were in the face of the keeper two or three times and we just have to kill it.

“Steven Bergwijn has two face to face with the keeper, we have the corner of Harry (Kane) with the free header, we had other counter-attacking situations that we didn’t finish.

“We had it, we knew how to hurt and we should do much more than we did,” he said.

Klopp appeared nonplussed when asked about his conversation with Mourinho at fulltime.

“It was not heated at all,” he told the BBC. “He wasn’t happy because he told me the better team lost — and I thought he was joking! But he wasn’t. So that’s it.”