Liverpool FC Forum

[UvS xR4GEx]

That's all on Slot unfortunately! Hes been pressured by the media criticism to change things thats not broken and its cost us. How can you not start Wirtz in a game like this? Its criminal!!!

Going forward we need to start Ekitike, Wirtz, Robbo, Frimpong, and Chiesa. Salah, Isak, Mac allister and Kerkez are not at the races at all!! Which is ridiculous because all 4 were in the PL team of the season or close to being.

I saw no fight anywhere! We need and i mean desperately need a ball winner! We need a Tonali.. We lose every dual on the pitch.

[UvS xR4GEx]

We have zero pace in the team (apart from Frimpong who can't get a game) we have zero ball winners in the team. We have one creative player in the whole team and Slot decides to bench him as the media doesnt rate him (Wirtz). If he's sticking with a unfit Isak then we need speed around him.. id play Ekitike over Salah and Frimpong over Bradley.. stop messing around with Szoboszlai at RB, play him with Gravenberch until Mac allister gets fit, and stick with Wirtz as a CAM

[ycsatbjywtbiastkamb]

A home defeat to a poor United team marks a sad end to a glorious chapter but this run of results needs to bring down the curtain certainly on Mo's tenure as a guaranteed starter for this club but maybe Virgil's too. Those players need to emulate Andy Robbo and put the club before their ego's, it's time for them to become bit part players.
Maradona, Pele, Cruyff, Zidane, Dalglish, Best, Beckenbauer, Charlton, Gerrard....you name it, no one who laces up a pair of boots escapes the clutches of father time and Mo and Virge are no different to anyone else, the pair of them are a million miles away from the 2 players who walked through the gates of Anfield 8 years ago...a million miles away.

[ycsatbjywtbiastkamb]

Konate is putting fires out all over the place, he's holding our defence together atm and how the hell is Mo starting ahead of Chiesa? That miss by Gakpo was *****.ing shocking as well.

[redshade]

"If we keep bringing in these performances we will have a fair chance of winning more football games. Losing four times in a row definitely does something with the team."


Unless Slot is watching a different game, we were poor.

This side is all over the place, one of the most shyte United team made us look average at times. We get sliced open easily and uptop we don't look any good either.

He needs to drop Salah and play Chiesa for starts. This feels like Brendan times, no cohesion, stability, passion.

We had few chance but tbh so did United. If Slot thinks that performance could get us more wins then I don't even know what to think. We haven't looked good for a while.

[ycsatbjywtbiastkamb]

I'd drop Virgil and give Gomez a go next to Konate, Virgil's developed a habit in his old age of losing track of players running in behind him and it happened again today for their first, we've been shipping goals at the rate of 2 a game since early August and it's nearly November now so something needs to change.

[red till i die!!]

Just gutted after that tbh. Totally ruined my evening    Just cant get over how passive we have become to the point that being up for it is enough to beat us. They are a terrible side that made us look average today.

Salah was shocking again and even looked knackered in the warm up. Gakpo isnt good enough despite being our most dangerous attacker today. He missed some good chances. He also doesnt track back and so much play breaks down or goes nowhere with him.  We end up carrying him as well as Mo which we shouldn't be doing when we have top talent at our disposal.  The full backs will get stick for today as they were poor but not getting any help off the wingers is a big part of that.

Midfield just get played through time and time again. They aren't breaking teams down as its all sideways and backwards stuff. Need to get a better balance in there. Wirtz when he came on operated well in tight spaces and threaded more passes through than the other 3 combined. Jones at the end though!! Lying on the ground in the dying seconds wasting time!! Frustrating as fook.

Slot can think what he wants but results need to do the talking now. He has to start fielding inform players from the start and stop relying on having to throw the kitchen sink every week just to get something from the game. We have become way to easy to play against and thats why today was no different to the Chelsea game. Can't keep doing the same thing and expect different results.

[red till i die!!]

I'd drop Virgil and give Gomez a go next to Konate, Virgil's developed a habit in his old age of losing track of players running in behind him and it happened again today for their first, we've been shipping goals at the rate of 2 a game since early August and it's nearly November now so something needs to change.

Slot clearly has favourites Mate and Joe ain't one of em!!

Virgil is declining but konate has a habit of going missing as well. Guehi will move in January and we need to make sure its here!!

[damjan193]

I'd drop Virgil and give Gomez a go next to Konate, Virgil's developed a habit in his old age of losing track of players running in behind him and it happened again today for their first, we've been shipping goals at the rate of 2 a game since early August and it's nearly November now so something needs to change.

I'm sorry yakka but you'd be out of your mind to do something like that. Konate has literally been terrible in almost all other games this season except for this one while the opposite goes for Virgil. The CBs are the least of our problems anyway.

[ycsatbjywtbiastkamb]

I'd drop Virgil and give Gomez a go next to Konate, Virgil's developed a habit in his old age of losing track of players running in behind him and it happened again today for their first, we've been shipping goals at the rate of 2 a game since early August and it's nearly November now so something needs to change.

I'm sorry yakka but you'd be out of your mind to do something like that. Konate has literally been terrible in almost all other games this season except for this one while the opposite goes for Virgil. The CBs are the least of our problems anyway.

Konate started the season poorly but at 26 he's a player just about to enter the prime years of his career, at that age dips in form are temporary, Virgil as good as he's been over the years is a pale shadow of the colossus he once was, he'll never be the same player again.
We can't just keep plodding along month after month conceding at a rate of 2 a game, the manager has to try something to stop the haemorrhaging, Joe G is no spring chicken himself but he's a lot more mobile than Virgil who looks frighteningly vulnerable in one-on-one situations right now. With all due respect dj the people who are out of their minds are the one's who think this CB partnership are blameless and doing the business, we've looked iffy at the back all season

[leeroy74]

a loss is a loss but a loss to this shower of sh!te is unacceptable. Amorin in the media now like the second coming of Ferguson just underlines the fact we're out of favour with the media. They love us getting beat.
As for the team... no words, can't understand it really. Individually the players we brought in are top drawer, on the pitch for us they look average at best. I feel embarrassed that for 2 seasons I've never shut up about Isak playing for us and now he is it's awful to watch.

Slot has a job to do here before Xmas, I can't see him here next season if he doesn't get us ticking again. We're at risk of not not qualifying for next seasons Champs league, we ain't winning it and top 5, I don't think so. The owners are not going to laugh off over £400m with a UEFA cup to play for

[Reg]

For those of us of a certain age when time seems to fly past, the CL final season when VVD was imperious was 6 years ago, 7 by the end of the season. He's now 34, or was Konate's age back in 2019 in Madrid. He's defied time as has Mo who was unstoppable 6 years ago.

LFC's mistake was fannying around and not paying a few extra bucks for Guéhi.  However Slot needs a kick up the ***** for not playing Robbo when he was the exact kind of player we need for a United game.

Naive mistakes all round.

[UvS xR4GEx]

For those of us of a certain age when time seems to fly past, the CL final season when VVD was imperious was 6 years ago, 7 by the end of the season. He's now 34, or was Konate's age back in 2019 in Madrid. He's defied time as has Mo who was unstoppable 6 years ago.

LFC's mistake was fannying around and not paying a few extra bucks for Guéhi.  However Slot needs a kick up the ***** for not playing Robbo when he was the exact kind of player we need for a United game.

Naive mistakes all round.

Yep we needed fighters on the pitch in this game. Robbo, Jones, and Ekitike would have grafted in this one and got stuck in. Kerkez looked nervous, Mac allister and Isak hardly broke a sweat between them. I think we should be looking deeper into this though because every player seems to be knackered 20 mins into all the games we've played this season..

[redshade]

Defensively we've been lacklustre for a while, I'd go back as far as Feb. Read a stat somewhere that since then we've only kept about 8 clean sheets. We concede too many goals. Titles are won typically when you are a tought unit, sadly we've become fragile.

We've got a side with good individuals who Slot ain't got a clue how to gel together. I hope it gets better I really do but I worry this will be one feked up season. Slots persistent with Salah is p*ssing me off, I mean does he fekin bend over for him or something. For some reason he hates Cheisa, and yet his the one who drives forward and makes things happen.

We will find out this season how good of a manager he really is.

[Reg]

Oliver Brown
Salah and Van Dijk risk going from Liverpool linchpins to liabilities
Pair’s struggles are such that we can reasonably ask why club placed them in golden handcuffs at such a late phase of their careers

Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk have acquired almost an armour-plating at Liverpool, with both so impervious to criticism that the club decided last summer to grant them two of the most lucrative contract extensions in the history of English football.

Salah’s alone is worth £50m until 2027, while the captain is scarcely the poor relation on £350,000 a week. While their signatures were heralded at the time as a triumph of patient negotiation, the money felt faintly obscene for two players with a combined age of 67. Sure enough, their contributions to a shambolic display against a mediocre Manchester United provide ample evidence that, just as their earnings have gone through the roof, their form has fallen off a cliff.

Two glaring examples of their downturns leapt out. The first took just a minute to materialise, as Van Dijk tracked back so dozily that Amad Diallo had time and space to weight the perfect pass for Bryan Mbeumo to strike.

The second was even more aggravating for a flustered Arne Slot. With Liverpool desperately chasing an equaliser, Salah, whose only two options were to score or square the ball to Florian Wirtz, contrived to do neither, his snatched shot slicing horribly wide.

It was symptomatic of the Egyptian’s malaise in recent weeks, when he has compounded half-hearted efforts at defending with a tendency to rush his decision-making in sight of goal.

The unpalatable truth is that Salah, 33, looks barely 20 per cent of the winger who electrified Liverpool’s title-winning campaign, in which he became the first player in the top five European leagues to be directly involved in 50 goals in a single season. While he is still putting himself in superb positions, he seems strangely tentative whenever he has to pull the trigger, having scored just one goal from open play in his last seven.

Just as Salah’s finishing is nowhere near his customary level, Van Dijk, at 34, has visibly lost a yard of pace, with his lackadaisical attempt at tracking Diallo suggesting he thought he could defend against him by aura alone.

‘Always start with the man in the mirror’
Roy Keane, not averse to slaughtering sacred cows, was withering about Van Dijk’s performance. “He signed a big contract, then you’re giving up loads of goals,” he said. “I’d be looking at him and asking, ‘What are you doing?’ Particularly as leader of the team. A couple of years ago, we talked about United parking the bus here and we were critical. Now they’ve scored two today, two last year, and you’re the centre-half. Always start with the man in the mirror. Van Dijk, if you’re the centre-half and your team are all of a sudden giving up loads of goals, and you’ve got new people coming to your club, you need to have a good look at yourself and think, ‘Am I really helping people?’”

Virgil van Dijk appears to have lost a yard of pace and was punished by Manchester United Credit: Getty Images/Michael Regan
There are many precedents in the Premier League for once-conscientious players to check out mentally once buttressed by lavish contract renewals. Take Marcus Rashford, who had a wondrous 30-goal season two years ago, only to become an expensive carthorse at United once he earned a five-year extension worth £325,000 a week.

Mesut Ozil, likewise, was never the same after Arsenal made him, in 2018, their highest-paid player ever, rewarding him to the tune of £350,000 a week. With such absurd numbers bringing their own pressure, Ozil could not cope, his attitude becoming so detached that then manager Unai Emery openly questioned his motivation.

Thankfully for Slot, Salah and Van Dijk are far from the stage where their investment in the cause can be doubted. But their struggles are of a magnitude where we can reasonably ask why Liverpool placed them in golden handcuffs at such a late phase of their careers. No player in his mid-30s, besides Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, has ever produced a standard to justify the money that Liverpool’s twin totems now command.

Salah is exhibit A, appearing to take his foot off the accelerator almost the instant that the cash injection came through. His decline, which could be temporary, is such that you wonder if Slot will even start him in every game. Unthinkable? Well, so too was the fact that he was substituted after 85 minutes, with Jeremie Frimpong immediately offering a greater threat as his replacement.

Outwardly at least, the manager appears unruffled. “After games like these, it’s quite normal that people focus on individual players,” Slot said. “For the first five or six games it was the signings we made, now it’s Mo Salah.”

The evidence, however, does not lie. Salah has gone longer than ever without a non-penalty goal, scoring as many at Anfield this season as Harry Maguire. Van Dijk, similarly, loses his man more frequently than he ever did, with his technique at times verging on nonchalance.

True, they have so much credit in the bank that most Liverpool supporters would not even dream of turning against them. But Slot needs to start seriously considering whether the players he once looked at as his linchpins are now, more often than not, his liabilities.