The Liverpool fans who are calling for Adrian to be booted out the club after his performance against Atletico Madrid don’t understand football.
After Georginio Wijnaldum headed home the first to level scores and give Anfield hope that the Reds would progress through to the quarter-final of the Champions League.
Roberto Firmino then tucked home his rebound after the initial effort bounced off the post to give Liverpool the lead and send hearts soaring all over the world.
But then Adrian floundered and it all came crashing down around us. His clearance, under no pressure, was awful and straight to Atletico Madrid in an attacking area – which lead directly to the first goal and the house of cards coming crashing down.
Jurgen Klopp defended the Spaniard in his post-game press conference and said: “The first goal is pretty obvious but come on, Adrian has saved us so many times since he’s here.”
Klopp is right, too. And don’t forget that the former West Ham United is the second choice stopper, and they do make mistakes.
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Alisson wouldn’t have punted it straight to Madrid, but his understudy did and that’s the way the game went.
To call for the second choice stopper to be sold shows a lack of understanding about how the game works.
There’s a second Adrian is a number two and it’s because he’s not as good as the first choice by definition. That means he’ll do things worse than the Brazilian, or things that Ali might not have done. Like punting it straight to the opposition.
Of course he’s going to be a worse player, it’s in his job description. Someone who was good enough to avoid mistake and define games time after time after time wouldn’t be happy to sit on the bench most weeks.
That’s the nature of the beast.
Liverpool would not have expected Adrian to play this many games. They wouldn’t have expected Alisson to pick up two injuries over the course of the campaign, but the fact is the understudy has played (mainly) well since coming into the side and won over many during the early phases of 2019/2020.
So instead of shouting yourself hoarse that Klopp needs to sign someone else (who better would want to collect their pay and watch Alisson pay every game), a better appreciation of the reality of the situation would go a long way.