Jamie Carragher warned of \u201ccrisis time\u201d for the reigning champions after a sequence of defeats that exposed persistent tactical flaws. Opponents are increasingly exploiting long balls and set pieces, a problem that left Arne Slot openly puzzled after yet another game in which those methods produced goals.<\/p>\n
Brentford\u2019s recent success from dead-ball situations was no accident. Keith Andrews was exclusively tasked with overseeing the club\u2019s dead-ball strategy before taking over the hot seat from Thomas Frank in the summer, and an ever-expanding pool of Liverpool opponents have adopted similar direct plans. Manchester United and Chelsea both racked up season-high tallies of long passes in their recent victories against the Reds, leaving Slot to bemoan such a strategy from teams \u201cwith all their talented players.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Dutch boss conceded: \u201cIt is definitely that teams have a certain playing style against us; it is a very good strategy to play. We have not found an answer yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carragher blamed the lightweight profile of the squad for their failings in these robust aspects of the game. \u201cLiverpool have to look at the physicality and height within their team because, right now, I don\u2019t think they have enough,\u201d fretted the retired centre back\u2014who takes great pride in amassing more than 500 Premier League appearances despite standing at less than 6\u2019 tall\u2014on Sky Sports .<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cLosing four games in a row for Brentford would be a disaster,\u201d and warned: \u201cTo see the champions do it with the expenditure in the summer means we\u2019re in crisis time for Liverpool right now.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere will be a lot of serious questions asked in the dressing room between the players and the coaching staff and the people above the manager. When they\u2019ve looked at what they\u2019ve spent, they\u2019ll be looking for a lot more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several of the players accused of frailty arrived in the summer. Florian Wirtz hasn\u2019t quite caught up to the Premier League \u2019s blood and thunder while Jeremie Frimpong is rarely fit enough to prove whether he can meet those demands. Even though Milos Kerkez thrived in a buccaneering Bournemouth side last term, the change of scenery has seemed to rob the fullback of any physical authority.<\/p>\n
Gary Neville offered a milder verdict. \u201cIt\u2019s not just a blip any more, it\u2019s becoming a concern,\u201d he mused, adding: \u201cArne Slot\u2019s Liverpool remind me a bit of my old Man Utd team.\u201d \u201cWe went through mad periods where we always looked capable of scoring, but we were all over the place.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Carragher warns of crisis as Liverpool are exposed by long balls, set pieces; Slot admits no answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4084,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172],"tags":[1162,299,1100],"class_list":["post-4085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-analytics","tag-arne-slot","tag-defence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}