Gary Neville diverted attention to Liverpool after their defeat at Bournemouth, using the south-coast result to sum up what he described as a season-long frailty. In commentary following the match, he highlighted defensive lapses and a bewildering spell when Liverpool were effectively down to 10 men.<\/p>\n
The former Manchester United defender pointed to Virgil van Dijk as being “slack at the back” while the rest of the side “seemed to be taken over by a collective brain fog” as they continued to play with 10 men for six first-half minutes while Joe Gomez was receiving treatment off the pitch. Bournemouth took advantage and established a 2\u20130 lead during that period.<\/p>\n
Neville made his observations ahead of United\u2019s statement victory over Arsenal at the Emirates on Sunday afternoon, and did not hide his view that the Reds\u2019 troubles have been sustained. “We\u2019ve said before that United have had the opportunity to go into the top four but there\u2019s no doubt the teams around them are struggling at the moment,” he beamed while in discussion with Sky Sports.<\/p>\n
“Liverpool last night, what a soft underbelly they\u2019ve developed in the last few months.<\/p>\n
“We were so critical of United for dropping points against teams like Burnley and Bournemouth. Now Liverpool have gone and done it and they\u2019re the reigning champions, so they have to pick up their fair share of criticism.<\/p>\n
“I think it was a really poor result for them last night. They looked a bit soft and not there. You\u2019ve been able to get at them all season.”<\/p>\n
After the Bournemouth game, Slot initially tried to stress accountability. “The only ones to blame are ourselves,” he told assembled media after the latest Liverpool setback extended their winless run to five Premier League games. He also raised concerns about the conditions on the south coast after the defeat.<\/p>\n
Neville\u2019s comments reframed a single result as evidence of a deeper run of inconsistent displays, while Liverpool and their manager faced questions both about personnel moments in the match and about form across recent months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Neville used Liverpool’s Bournemouth defeat to argue their fragile form has defined the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6253,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[739,175,179],"tags":[299,1307],"class_list":["post-6254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bournemouth","category-liverpool","category-manchester-united","tag-arne-slot","tag-collapse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6254","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=6254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}