Duds from the painful Atletico Madrid loss
These are the duds from the Liverpool loss to Atletico Madrid.
It’s been nearly four months since Diego Simeone’s side came over from Spain and broke hearts on Merseyside. There are some brilliant comparisons between the Atletico boss and Jurgen Klopp, which were highlighted superbly by our writer Paul Landwehr.
Before he decide who was an absolute dud in the game, we should probably go back over what happened on that day.
Gini Wijnaldum scored to level things up (Atletico won the home leg 1-0) and take things through to extra time, before Roberto Firmino netted to put Liverpool 2-1 up on aggregate.
All Klopp had to do was make sure the defence was solid and Liverpool would ride out a tricky two-legged tie and make the next round. After reaching the final two seasons in a row, we were all confident.
Anyone who can remember this game will be pretty confident in naming who the dud is going to be, and it’s a man who had been pretty solid up to this point.
But when Adrian decided to kick a fairly harmless clearance straight to Joao Felix, who fed substitute Marcos Llorente to score the leveller, things changed inside Anfield.
It must be mentioned that Joe Gomez didn’t have a great game either, although things all changed when Adrian dropped that clanger. We’d still be in the Champions League if it wasn’t for him.
You can read our player ratings from the night to freshen up your memory. It’s hard to heap too much criticism on Adrian, who is the second choice stopper and normally wouldn’t be playing in the biggest nights of the season.
His performances over the course of 2019/2020 have been generally good, but this is still a good goalkeeper with plenty of Premier League experience. He shouldn’t be punting a clearance straight to the opposition’s most creative player in a crunch Champions League moment.
Allison has been fairly injury prone this campaign and we’ll have to hope that the Brazilian can keep himself fit for the whole of 2020/2021.
Next. £36m Liverpool transfer target agrees five-year deal with massive rivals. dark
Who do you remember as being the dud? Let us know via the comments section.