Both teams have not had the league season that they had thought, or wanted to have this year, but tonight’s game is for bragging rights and they will both be coming to win.
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Despite Liverpool’s late flurry of pressure, it looked to be a sweet victory for Guus Hiddink’s side over their bitter rivals, until the third minute of second-half injury time, when substitute Sheyi Ojo’s cross was fumbled by Asmir Begovic and troubled stalwart Christian Benteke was in the right place at the right time to head home and send Anfield moderately insane.
With their trip to Basel for the decider against Sevilla looming large on the horizon, Klopp selected the same XI that had started the 3-0 home win over Villarreal in the second leg of the Europa League semi-final.
The 22-year-old rallied his teammates until the final whistle and if the decision was left up to Liverpool fans on Twitter he probably would be captain already.
Matic said: “I have said it many times, Eden is our best player”.
Eden Hazard was outstanding as he reminded everyone why he was voted last season’s Footballer of the Year as he netted a superb individual goal to open the scoring.
“There were a lot of moments when we shot and we should have passed”.
“I said to my players after the game it was the most important game of the season because we could learn most from it”, he said.
“I think you could see that from the way we kept playing even though things weren’t quite going for us”.
“After that, we had the intention to go for the second but we didn’t kill the game off in the second half”. We showed in the first 15 minutes what we’re capable of.
“When we do that, we know it is hard to beat us”.
“We didn’t defend together but we invested a lot and that made us exhausted”.
What did you make of Can’s performance against Chelsea?
Its Ok that Emre Can had a bad game yesterday and it was not in an Europa League Final.
On Tuesday, Jurgen Klopp said he has “no idea” when Liverpool will be good enough to win the Premier League, with the Reds now sitting eighth in the table.
“If you don’t think you need to score in each situation then you can celebrate other situations”.
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“When you get hit as a boxer you get more exhausted”.
