This analysis focuses on the switch in Kroos's position that occurred roughly after 12 minutes, where he moved deeper and to the right into an area that none of our players were prepared to follow and press him – and that allowed him to dominate the game from there on unchallenged. The crux of the problem from our perspective was that Wijnaldum playing LCM didn't want to press nearly as high as Keita on the other side and also having the more attacking Keita at RCM meant that Trent was left without protection against Vinicius, which together with Kroos having the freedom of the Di Stefano proved to be fatal. A simple switch between Keita and Gini might have mitigated the problem, but for some reason we didn't do it.
This is not to absolve Keita's performance, but Klopp did him no favors by selecting a tactical plan that was easily undone by Kroos's switch. After that he was in no-man's land, caught between trying to press too high and protecting the full-back all the way at the other end of the pitch. A more tactically intelligent and confident player might have been able to adjust mid-game, but Keita coming in without match practice couldn't and had to be hooked. Ultimately it's on the manager for selecting a player who wasn't able to do a job the game needed him to do.
