Very disappointed but in reality, without VVD, Gomez & Henderson we were never going to win the CL were we?
City, Bayern or PSG would tear our defence to pieces with the current personnel we have out there. Kabak is young, talented but inexperienced. Phillips is a lower PL standard CB.
Keita was terrible but he wasn’t the only one. I can’t believe the 1st half performance, totally embarrassing. I can accept being outplayed but we didn’t show any fight, determination, spirit, nothing in the 1st half. It’s a CL 1/4 final & we were playing like we didn’t care.
2nd half was better but still not good enough. If we score the first goal in the 2nd leg we have a chance but I don’t think we’ll do it. Shame but I expected to win nothing this season as soon as we lost VVD & Gomez.
Yup, I was furious as well - it seemed as if we lacked any drive and commitment. I know it isn't the case, but Real made it look like it and we should have snapped out of it a lot earlier. I did not like the lineup we started with - I felt we needed Fabinho in defence and wanted Firmino to play instead of Jota. Jota is in great form but can bring more of an impact when coming off the bench - Firmino does not have that in his game but is better for positional and defensive play.
It was a bit too naive thinking we can play an open attacking game vs Real, but we scored one so we still have something to hope for in the 2nd leg.
I don't think the issue for Liverpool is the players. Obviously van Dijk is a big absence, but still, he's not the whole team.
Liverpool's big problem is confidence. They got into a bad place this season, and the confidence nose-dived. It doesn't matter who you pick for the team, when morale is that low.
The main thing that is beating Liverpool at the moment is their own collective mental state.
No, the problem is exactly the players. It's not just Van dijk, it's Van dijk, Matip, Gomez and Henderson combined. We are playing with 2 clueless centrebacks - one coming from a team that was in the bottom 3 in the Bundesliga and which has conceded like a million of goals and the other one is simply not good enough - not even for Championship level, let alone the CL quarterfinals.
