I created the attached thread after the first leg of the Barcelona semi in 2019 and that turned out okay; I thought about making a similar thread before Atletico last year but decided not to and that resulted in us falling victim to goalkeeping errors similar to the 2018 final; https://twitter.com/rsabol10/status/1124050981275279363

Sooo, in hopes that history will continue to loosely repeat itself on an every-other-year basis, here we go:

(also, it’s incredible to me that the only reason we’ve been eliminated from the Champions League since the 17/18 season is due to shocking goalkeeping errors)

To start, this is by no means 2019 (luckily, neither is the deficit)...but we can still do it

1st half bad. What more is there to say...

It looked, and certainly felt like the worst half of play under Klopp ever (other than maybe the very beginning, but certainly the worst in this modern era - since 17/18 - of Klopp).

We were shockingly bad in attack - we couldn’t connect even simple passes at times and showed no real creativity.
Defensively we looked genuinely scared - gave them time to get organized going forward and their older, but still world class, mids way too much time to pick passes

Also, I don’t like to talk about refereeing too much (unless it’s the nightmare that is VAR), but I’d be remiss not to mention that it was a clear foul on Mané.

Overall, I thought the referee was ‘eh,’ but at least we didn’t have a perfectly good goal disallowed like Dortmund did against City (for which I just assume City paid cash lol)

I also generally felt/feel really bad for Trent - and not just due to his bad headed assist that made Real’s second goal. No one else is talked about or put under even half the lens that Trent is. It would presumably affect almost anyone at that point and seemingly did get to him

I suppose that’s just part of what comes with being such a superstar at such a young age and being a key part of a great team that has won the biggest competitions around, but the level of scrutiny surrounding him recently seems a bit much.

Regardless, I was really happy to see him score such a HUGE goal over the weekend and show such a good sense of humor about everything on social media: “are you not entertained?” lol

On a positive note from the first leg, we looked sharp at the start of the second half and I really thought we were going to get something out of the game; a draw seemed definitely achievable, but maybe even a winner (I dreamed).

Jota made our goal; it was beautiful! What a player he’s been already and what a massive goal it was... BUT...

unfortunately we immediately went back to looking loose in defense and lacking creativity in attack. I knew right away that another Real goal was coming and it didn’t take long for them to make us pay.

Also worth mentioning is that, from the angles I’ve seen, I think it’s harsh to say (as some have) that Alison should’ve saved their third.

So, not to state the obvious (anymore than I normally do/have done so far and will continue to do in this thread), but at that point we really needed another away goal (but at least we got the 1, which makes it a better 2-goal margin than it would’ve been had it ended 2-0).

Moving to tomorrow: go for it and play a front 4? Maybe.
My much more definitive thought though is that we really need a presence that only Hendo can provide. That said, I honestly think Milner needs to be on the field to bring a similar presence; he’s the closest we have to it.

Who plays alongside Milner (and whether it’s a front 4 or front 3), is hard to call, but I think it needs to be Thiago and/or Fab. More importantly, whoever the front 3 or 4 are all need to be on it from the opening whistle.

Second leg should (hopefully) be a fun albeit extremely nerve racking game. We’ll definitely miss our famous European night atmosphere at Anfield, but we can certainly still make it through!
#NeverGiveUp #YNWA