3 hours ago
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The truth often unspoken about Liverpool is how they far they had to go back before they could try to move forwards again.
Liverpool won the Premier League last season and almost immediately lost three-quarters of their forward line.
The sales of Luis Diaz and Darwin Nunez had been a while in the coming. The passing of Diogo Jota could not have been foretold.
Together the removal of those three players presented with Liverpool with a question not familiar to most teams who win a big title. Usually, it’s about supplementing what you have but for Liverpool it wasn’t.
It was about building something new and here we are – eleven games in to the 20205-26 season – with manager Arne Slot looking like a bloke who has turned up at the wrong construction site.
There were many contributing factors to this rather numbing defeat to a great modern rival. Liverpool – after the emotional and physical investment made in big recent wins over Aston Villa and Real Madrid – looked leggy and short of energy. That was a surprise. Mo Salah, meanwhile, continues to unbalance his team on one side. That was not a surprise.
Arne Slot looks aghast at the end, with a triumphant Pep Guardiola walking off in the distance
Mo Salah looks a yard slower than this time last year and continues to unbalance the team
Slot’s team were also on the wrong side of a couple of big moments. Virgil van Dijk’s disallowed goal at 0-1. Cody Gakpo’s big far post miss at 0-2.
Equally, it’s pointless ignoring the fact that Liverpool signed five outfield players for a combined cost of around £390m in the summer and right now are not getting anything remotely resembling a tune out of any of them.
Here at the Etihad, Slot selected only two of the quintet – the centre forward Hugo Ekitike and creative midfielder Florian Wirtz. Both were pretty anonymous. Elsewhere, left-back Milos Kirkez started the season but has now given way to Andrew Robertson while another full-back, Jeremie Frimpong, and the forward Aleksandar Isak have both been injured.
So there is the heart of the problem. Liverpool have lost good players and have not yet been able to replace what they took with them when they went. Looked that in those terms, why is anybody surprised Slot’s team are struggling in a competitive league such as this?
The lack of impact of the players mentioned here is unlikely to be permanent. Liverpool have bought well and the age profile of Slot’s squad is okay. Over time, we can expect vast improvement.
Right now, though, in a world where short-termism rules, Liverpool’s failure to integrate their new arrivals is not so much holding them back but destroying them. Until that changes, this is a struggle that we can expect to go on.
Ekitike – the French forward – has been largely exempt from criticism thus far. He started the season well. But the 22-year-old hasn’t managed to maintain that.
And with Salah so far from what he once was, Liverpool’s inability to keep the ball in their opponents’ half – their inability to release inevitable City pressure - took a heavy toll on what was always going to be a very difficult afternoon against a side running into form.
Virgil van Dijk cannot believe his goal, which would have brought the scores level, is ruled out
Florian Wirtz had another disappointing afternoon against Manchester City on Sunday
Speaking after the game, City manager Pep Guardiola spoke of how Salah has so often been a ‘nightmare’ for him during the last decade.
Currently, Liverpool’s Egyptian king is a dream to play against. He can’t control the ball, he looks a yard slower than this time last year while his disinterest in tracking back to help Conor Bradley behind him inevitably means Liverpool’s central players get attracted to that side, leaving spaces in the middle.
Do things like that against teams like City and they will find their moments to hurt you. That is what happened here.
In the short-term, Liverpool’s objective should be to ensure their disappointing league season doesn’t worsen between the other side of the international break and Christmas.
Apart from a game at Tottenham on December 20, Liverpool’s run of league fixtures between now and a game at Arsenal on January 8 is palatable. Their aim should be to establish a top four position between now and then and if they manage that then there should be no hysteria.
Teams like City and – fifteen years ago – Manchester United have skewed they way a modern generation of football fans view things. They expect dominance, continued excellence. The truth is that it is desperately hard to defend an English title. This is not Germany.
Liverpool have an exceptional squad of footballers. Ekitike is 23, Isak is 26 and Wirtz is 22, the same age as Kerkez and Bradley. These are not players who have necessarily been bought for the here and now, it’s just that something rather better than what they have delivered so far would help.
Is the defending champions’ interest in the title over already? Not necessarily but probably. They are four points behind City who sit second. It’s been a largely dismal effort thus far and the most we can say is that at least the reasons are crystal clear.
