Just very flat. A game the players really could have done with the crowd to waken them up. Amount of balls played about 5 yards behind players was unreal. Milner and Jones covered a lot of ground, the only two who came out with any major credit. I thought Origi showed himself a lot but he couldn’t link up as he seemed to end up on the ground. Mane had a real stinker. Hopefully some of these knocks clear up for TAA and Henderson. Very important to get both back asap. Haven’t a clue what is going on with Thiago
I thought Atalanta were absolutely excellent yesterday to their credit, having never seen them play other than our first game against them I couldn't believe the difference, like two different teams. They played very similar physical football to Athletico and they outworked us and made everything difficult, they were on the edge in terms of physicality all night and we never once got to settle into a rhythm. I'm sure our first team would have coped better although we do struggle when teams can match our intensity for 90 minutes but we have a game which was ultimately more important on Saturday morning so the deck needed to be shuffled. I'd agree with an earlier poster that it was a poor showing from Origi, I see him working hard but he's no confidence in anything he's doing and is unlikely to crack into that without regular game time that we can probably ill afford to give him. I don't like the idea of subbing out four players in one go, it just seems impossible to gel so many players at once but in truth the damage was already done, had the second goal already gone in he might have just told them to sit back down.
Very poor performance. Firmly think he went the wrong way with this one but on to the next one. Very hard to get fluency with only 5 first team players in the starting lineup. Have to do it next Tuesday instead against Ajax who are fighting it out for a place with Atalanta now. Play a similar side next week and we will be third in the group going into the last game in Denmark.
Klopp had a plan to give as many players as a rest as possible,before getting the team he would have started if resting players wasn't important,onto the pitch for the last half hour. It might have worked if we didn't concede just before those players arrived. That approach was always going to lead to criticism if we didn't get the result,but I reckon if he could go back to yesterday afternoon,he'd do the exact same. Its not the first time he's been criticised for going weaker than people wanted,and he'll more than likely be criticised again for it,probably even before 2020 is out. We just have to accept he's working with way more information than we are,and that when there's so little time between certain games,then protecting players from injuries will take precedence over potential opportunities to rest further down the line. Theres very sound logic behind getting the job done last night to make the last 2 dead rubbers,but if we lose another important player for 2 or 3 months in the Brighton game as a consequence of that,then it becomes a false economy very quickly. There's risks no matter what way he goes but our track record of balancing those risks against the big picture,is why I have no complaints about team selection,except maybe for I'd have gone with Minamino over Origi.
It is what it is, we'll still qualify and once we get the 3 points on Saturday any changes will have been worthwhile.