"The biggest problem for us in the second half was that we couldn’t keep that tempo," Jurgen Klopp told a press conference after the Europa League elimination at the hands of Atalanta.
"For us, you saw tonight in Trent Alexander-Arnold which player we didn’t have for a while now. As long as he was fresh, together with Macca [Alexis Mac Allister] he set the tempo, the rhythm, the direction of the game. Obviously he was a bit running a bit out of gas.
"Macca had to go through this game, which is crazy and the way he did it was absolutely insane, but that was the difference. We can do that usually [keep the tempo] but tonight it was not that easy.
"If we could have kept a higher rhythm a bit longer, I think whatever Atalanta changed in the second half was not [the reason]. In the first half they pressed really high, what they did in the end again, in the middle of the game maybe not that much so that’s how it is, but that was not the difference."
Despite winning the second leg 1-0, Liverpool still ended up exiting the competition after a 3-0 defeat at Anfield.
The Reds needed to score twice in the second half of the return leg, but they barely threatened to find the net even once.
