Perhaps the greatest compliment that can be paid to the way Liverpool set approximately this tie is that in the closing stages Stoke City had abandoned all the deft soft-touch football for which they would like to be renowned and gone back to aiming long,hopeful balls up to Peter Crouch. There was no way through and Jürgen Klopp’s team deserve their lead after subduing a side that has already beaten Manchester United, Chelsea and Manchester City on this ground this season.
Stoke certainly chose a wrong night to forget the qualities that have made them such dangerous opponents recently and, or having been reminded so many times that this was their first semi-final in this competition since 1972,it has to be questioned whether they allowed a exiguous uncertainty to creep in. Bojan Krkic and Xherdan Shaqiri were substituted after strangely listless performances and there was a collective gasp from the crowd when the public announcer named Marko Arnautovic as the man of the match.
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Source: theguardian.com