ReactionRobbo on Wembley glory, Kelleher and another winner's medal
Sunday’s Wembley final against Chelsea was an enthralling and event-filled contest that somehow ended without a goal after 120 minutes of play.
Penalties were therefore required to separate the sides and 11 Reds, including goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher, successively scored before Kepa Arrizabalaga missed and Liverpool were confirmed winners.
Read Robertson’s reaction to the fifth major honour achieved under Jürgen Klopp below as he spoke to Liverpoolfc.com post-match…
On his emotions after a draining game…
It has been really tight between us and Chelsea all season. The two games in the Premier League have both been draws. Today, we both had chances; I think they probably had the better chances, to be honest with you. Quite an open game, but I think by the end everyone was just knackered and I think everyone you could just see both sets of teams were kind of looking at each other thinking, ‘When will this end?’ Really tough on the body, a lot of work has been put into this. The longer it goes, somebody has to miss a penalty and it’s horrible really. But, fortunately, it wasn’t one of our lads.
On playing in a match of such changing fortunes over 120 minutes…
I think we had a pretty good goal disallowed. They’re saying Virg has blocked, he was in an offside position – I’m not really sure it made much of an impact. But it is what it is. They had a couple of close offside ones that got ruled out offside, Mo had one cleared off the line. It was a strange game, it really was. The first 10 minutes at the very start of the game we weren’t at our best, I thought the next 35 were really good first half. Second half, they came out better and caused us a bit more problems. But finals are all about winning; you don’t come here to put on a good performance and come away with nothing. We were far from our best today but we’ve got a winner’s medal and that’s the most important, against a really good team. I don’t think both teams were at our quite best, we were quite open and things like that. But although it was 0-0, I’m sure it was quite entertaining for the neutrals.
On Kelleher scoring the decisive spot-kick for the Reds…
I was desperate for him to save one, especially when I knew mine was coming up. I was so desperate for him to save one! His pen was ridiculous. That’s where I think penalty shootouts are horrible – when it gets to the end it’s lads that are the least confident and don’t really want to take one and they sometimes decide the finals. It’s tough. But Caoimh’s penalty was different class. The most important thing was we won it, whatever way we were willing to do it, whatever way possible. It had to go to penalties and luckily we all scored ours.