24-year-old admits he struggled to stay awake during Liverpool’s pre-Man City meeting this week

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The decision to play Liverpool’s game against Manchester City at 12.30 after an international break has drawn plenty of crticism.

Jurgen Klopp, famously opposed to such early starts for his team, was not pleased with the scheduling, while Pep Guardiola seemingly removed a portion of his players from playing for their countries.

There’s no question that the timing of the game affected the pace with which it was played. Usually the most intense fixture on the Premier League calendar, today’s game was certainly more lethargic than usual.

And listening to Alexis Mac Allister speak to LFCTV after the match, you can understand why that would be. Mac Allister played away in Argentina and Brazil during the last 10 days, and claimed that the jet-lag had made preparation unusually difficult.

“Honestly, it’s so hard to play like this,” said the 24-year-old. “Yesterday we were in a meeting talking about Man City and the way we wanted to play, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open!

“It’s very tough, jet-lag, long trip. But it is what it is, we like playing football this is what we want, we want to win and that’s why we did our best today.”

Mac Allister explains preparation problem

It’s the nature of the game that players end up being on different continents from one week to the next. As Mac Allister alludes to, South Americans in particular are used to doing that.

But it does mean that when you’ve got the toughest fixture of the whole season on the way, preparation is going to be patchy.

Klopp could reportedly be seen growing slightly frustrated in training this week as he tried to formulate plans for the game.

As it turned out, he was without nine of his starters at the Etihad Stadium for most of the week. Four of the five substitutes were also away.

Nevertheless, there is an argument that this actually benefitted Liverpool to a degree. City themselves were a little more sluggish than usual, it works both ways.

As for Mac Allister, he woke up enough to put in perhaps his best performance since joining the club.

Klopp once again spoke after the game to reiterate that he sees the Argentine as his starting holding midfielder for the moment. Performances like the one he gave today will strengthen confidence in that amongst the fanbase.

With no international break now until March, it’s now chance for Alexis to really bed down and fully settle in.