Pathetic from Klopp in his post-match interview last night, and he knew it too.
I saw a stat last night that Alexander-Arnold gave the ball away 41 times! His defending was an embarrassment whenever Atletico went anywhere near him; for Llorente's first goal and Morata's right at the end, the kid shows he has no defensive awareness whatever; he might be able to see a forward pass/cross but he is thick as a brick defensively. Very lucky he plays at a time when there is such an inbalance between the biggest clubs and the rest.
Even then he has 5 measly open play assists in 40 games this season! You would think he's prime Dani Alves the way some of you (and other fans) talk about "Trent". It really bugs me that when he is judged as an attacking fullback his set-piece assists are just thrown into the mix as if they are relevant in any way to his attacking play as a fullback. Yes, he takes a decent to good dead ball, but Liverpool are a good team to take them for because they get an awful lot of them and have some very big guys to hit; van Dijk is almost a cheat code player. There are numerous other players who have better delivery in this league that would get superior numbers if you swapped them in to take them; James Maddison would have about 20 by now!
No one talks about his defending because everyone knows it's shit: even Atletico's turtle paced players were dancing round him on the rare ocassions they got up the pitch, but as an attacking fullback the reason he only has 5 assists in 40 games despite playing for such a dominant team is because he has average pace, very poor acceleration and agility, dodgy close control (which is why a lot of his good passing and crossing comes from deep positions where he gets the time and space on the ball he needs: he'd be completely ineffective if he played as a winger or in midfield where many think he'll end up; he won't), and he couldn't beat a man from a standing start even if said defender was a clone of himself!
I really like his forward passing from deep areas and he is very good at quickly sensing the right area to hit a cross into; those are his great strengths, but the downsides to his attacking game are there and when you stop conflating his overall assists with his open play assists, the numbers bear that out.
