Only one Liverpool player has appeared in all ten of their games so far this season, but he has been \u2018abject\u2019, \u2018offers nothing\u2019 and \u2018needs to be dropped\u2019.<\/p>\n
We also have thoughts on Manchester United and Chelsea.<\/p>\n
Send your thoughts to theeditor@football365.com.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lost Liverpool<\/p>\n
So, when Liverpool got all those late winners after varying degrees of pants performance, I will tell you what I thought \u2013 \u2018When this all clicks, we are going to blow teams away\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n
And I think I wasn\u2019t the only one<\/a>. I mean, yes, we hadn\u2019t been playing well, but we were getting wins regardless and considering the strength of our team\/squad and what we could do when everyone was fit and firing, yeesh, teams were going to be in trouble. Obviously, the other side of that coin was what if we continue to play poorly and performances don\u2019t come, we can\u2019t keep bailing ourselves out of trouble with late goals. That was mostly batted away. Of course, there was also the quiet thought that said something like \u2018what if this is us not playing badly, but being worse.\u2019 I gave that zero consideration though, because surely that wouldn\u2019t be the case. Not after all that money. Not after being reigning champions.<\/p>\n Well, that thought it is well and truly ringing around my head now. And not because we played truly, truly awful against a mediocre Galatasaray team<\/a>. Not because we were nearly blown away at the weekend by Palace in the first half hour. Not because we got completely outplayed by an Isak-less Newcastle team that played half the game with 10 men. And not because we looked absolutely toothless against newly promoted Burnley. It\u2019s because this season has seen those awful performances surrounded by resoundingly mediocre ones. Every single game this season has failed to see Liverpool set any kind of bar of performance.<\/p>\n And the list of issues seemingly grows rather than diminishes. They are too numerous to entirely go through, but lets name the most obvious and excruciating.<\/p>\n The Press. Liverpool\u2019s press has been variations of tired, lazy, disorganised, and mostly, extremely open. The front players seem to have no idea who is pressing where. Both Isak and Ekitike seem slower and less inclined to close than Diaz and Nunez who came before. The passing lanes are far too frequently left wide open, even with players in relative proximity, and without a coherent strategy from the front the midfielders are routinely left chasing about trying to close the gaps created by the absent front players.<\/p>\n Shape \u2013 Liverpool\u2019s shape has been awful. We started the season wanting to create space for Salah by bunching lots of our creative players in the left half space. The logic seemed to be that the tricky interplay from those players would plot their way through the cluttered pitch, and when the time was right, and for variation, they would play a quick ball out to Salah that would leave him 1v1 with a full back who he could exploit. Instead, Liverpool rarely pass to Salah in the wilderness of the right hand side. However, if it does get out there we have our next problem\u2026<\/p>\n Salah \u2013 The problem you have when you base a lot of your play around one superstar, is that you are rather reliant on that player always being bloody awesome. Up until this season, Salah had shown us we need not worry. He is always great and always will be great. But then this season arrived. Salah is 33 and finally is starting to show the weathering that age will inevitably toll upon one\u2019s football game. A half a percentage of pace, a half of acceleration, a half of quick thinking. It adds up. And Salah is bang out of form and perhaps showing his first real decline. I have no doubt he will score goals and have moments of magic, but I fear they will be more far more fleeting than previously.<\/p>\n Macallister \u2013 He was the absolute glue that held our midfield together last season. His ability to take the ball deep and play passes through the lines, recycling possession and playing key passes was exceptionally important. Injury has robbed him of a preseason and the slow progress getting him back fit has left him exposed physically and in dire form. We need him back to his best. No one else in the squad has his skillset, and its possibly the most important to our overall style.<\/p>\n Kerkez \u2013 I am not entirely sure how Kerkez has not been dropped. For all the criticism of his defensive lapses, this seems to be the area he has been performing as expected, which is decent. It\u2019s going the other way that he has been abject. Kerkez largely offers nothing on the left<\/a>. He rarely makes an overlapping run and when he does its basic. There are no darts inside the FB, no whipped balls in from deep, no penetrating passes into midfield, no tidy intricate passing. He mainly stands relatively deep on the left and passes backwards. I had seen Robertson lose a yard of pace and start to get occasionally exposed by a winger with real speed, but his attacking prowess still remained. He still had rapier like balls in both from deep and from the byline. He could spot a run and play accurate balls through. Now there is none of that. Its short, its backward and its basic. Kerkez needs to be dropped.<\/p>\n Wirtz \u2013 Wirtz has done nothing wrong. He works hard, he tries to close down, albeit relatively poorly, he shows nice touches and occasional great feet to play a pass or take a shot. There is obviously a player in there. The problem is that he took the place of another player who did plenty of those things himself. But Szobo pressed better. And he shot better. And he worked harder. And although Wirtz hasn\u2019t done really badly, he is either not in form or has not acclimatised enough to get that best form out<\/a>. Shuffling him out to the left has not improved anything either. They know Gakpo, they understand his strengths, putting in Wirtz, who is very different, simply confuses an already confused team.<\/p>\n Slot \u2013 He needs to start addressing the obvious concerns. One of the moments I knew I had to worry during Klopp\u2019s previous tenure was when he refused to acknowledge the Hendo\/Fab midfield had run out of legs. It was painfully clear and yet he made every excuse under the sun to pretend other parts of the team were the problem. It didn\u2019t help them, and it won\u2019t help us now not to have Slot accept there is a problem. He doesn\u2019t have to throw anyone under the bus. This isn\u2019t necessarily new players coming and cocking it all up. But he needs to show a willingness to change our approach or lineup or something.<\/p>\n The defence is worse, the midfield is worse and the attack is worse. Maybe it will all magically click into gear, but there is zero evidence to assume so. We are conceding far more xG and creating far less. We don\u2019t pass the eye test and we fail abjectly at the underlying stats<\/a>. This is a team playing well below the standard of last season and we\u2019re all lucky things aren\u2019t considerably worse already. The stats would have us midtable, and they have not been skewed by red cards or second strings. There is no need to panic, but neither should there be a glossing over of abject performances. We have Chelsea next and then the international break. We need a reset. \u00a0<\/p>\n Turkish VAR<\/p>\n Given recent officiating we can\u2019t blame Arne Slot for being confused when the officials awarded a penalty against Liverpool and overruled the decision to award a spot kick to them. You get used to things always going your way.<\/p>\n Also, that penalty decision shows that VAR isn\u2019t the problem. English Premier League refereeing standards are the problem.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the solution? Introduce foreign referees and VAR officials to the Premier League.<\/p>\n No team can complain about it. Liverpool certainly can\u2019t or it\u2019ll look like they really do have PGMOL in their pocket and the other teams, and fans, would have their conspiracy theories debunked \u00a0<\/p>\n The sad state of social media fans<\/p>\n If you hang around on social media (most of us do) then you\u2019re probably already aware of how absolutely mental social media football fans are.<\/p>\n After getting beaten by a very good palace side who give everyone problems I was shocked to see Liverpool fans on social media going in on Arne Slot with some absolute Swiss cheese brained morons calling for him to be sacked.<\/p>\n These will be the same fans who posted fsg out for years and years as well. As a Liverpool fan I don\u2019t consider those fans to be part of the Liverpool family. They are FIFA brained spanners who just react to whatever meme they saw last and that meme is basically the screen saver for their peabrains.<\/p>\n This morning I read fans giving shit to slot about not picking chiesa for the galatasary game based entirely on James Pearce tweet saying there were no reasons to not pick him. Slot literally said on TV chiesa picked up a niggle which was still there in training. But because nobody online bothers to fact check anything anymore everyone just accepted Pearce\u2019s tweet as gospel.<\/p>\n If you have posted that the man who currently holds the premier League trophy should be sacked after losing one game to the most inform team in the league you genuinely need banning from social media and the sport of football in general.<\/p>\n I understand now why arsenal fans hate afctv and why United fans hate goldbridge. These fans are an embarrassment and most definitely don\u2019t represent the Liverpool fan base as a whole. The vast majority of us are disappointed with the loss but know it\u2019s just one loss. We know wirtz will eventually get to grips with the pace of the league. We know isak will get match fit and bang them in.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re one of these fans, from any club not just Liverpool , then you need to have the x-ray machine turned up to full radiation next time you get scanned at the airport. MORE ON LIVERPOOL\u2019S STRUGGLES FROM F365 \u00a0<\/p>\n In support of Manchester United<\/p>\n Dear Editor,<\/p>\n Having lived through the Glory, Glory Man United days and seen their\u00a0incredible fall from grace, it got me thinking that maybe, this is exactly what Man U needed and the ownership wanted.<\/p>\n My theory is that while Man U were successful, the media and the public tired of success and therefore\u00a0tuned out to a degree.<\/p>\n Thus, while they became popular on the back of their success, they didn\u2019t\u00a0capitalize as much\u00a0as they probably should have.<\/p>\n But, once the decline started to happen, the fans, media and\u00a0public became more and more interested\u00a0in the car crash and with it, a lot of new eyeballs fell on the brand.<\/p>\n Therefore, I feel Man U fans should be thanking ETH, Amorim, Sancho, Rashford et al., for their contribution to seeing Man U revenues grow by 34% or from \u00a3494m in 2021 to \u00a3666m in 2025.<\/p>\n Man U fans should be counting their lucky stars that their managers, players and owners have overseen an incredible success story off the pitch and invested it on the pitch.<\/p>\n Long may this story continue. \u00a0<\/p>\n Chelsea fatigue<\/p>\n
Ed Ern\u00a0<\/p>\n
Eoin (or proven) Ireland\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lee\u00a0<\/p>\n
\ud83d\udc49\u00a0The truth behind Liverpool and their \u00a3400m spend: one \u2018downgrade\u2019 and what Wirtz needs \u2018more\u2019 of<\/a>
\ud83d\udc49\u00a0Ekitike \u2018breaks silence\u2019 as Liverpool \u2018cracks\u2019 deepen for crisis-riddled table-toppers<\/a><\/p>\n
Colm Ryan<\/p>\n