Liverpool’s Premier League title defense has already evaporated and defeat against Nottingham Forest showed the seriousness of the problems Arne Slott has to deal with
Nottingham Forest’s deserved victory at Anfield on Saturday presented Liverpool’s leaders with a golden opportunity to step up to the plate. Forest were the better team after suffering a disastrous defeat to Liverpool, their sixth loss in their last seven Premier League games.
With Arne Slott and Virgil van Dijk out, a race has begun to take responsibility for the team’s 3-0 defeat, which they had not won on the road all season. Van Dijk started first. “Everyone in the team has to take responsibility as well. Football is a team and everyone has to take responsibility,” said the Liverpool captain. “We have to digest this and accept it. We have to try harder. We have to keep moving forward.”
Next it’s the slot’s turn. “It’s up to me whether things go well or poorly,” the coach said. “We didn’t create enough. We tried to adjust some things, but it didn’t work out. We couldn’t score goals. You never know in this stadium. Sometimes when you score goals, things go well.”
Van Dijk then responded to his manager’s comments in an interview with the paper. “In terms of letting him down, we’re definitely letting him down, but we’re also letting ourselves down,” he said.
read more: Virgil van Dijk makes surprising entrance after Liverpool and Arne Slott record lowsread more: Liverpool record worst record with defeat at Nottingham Forest; Arne Slott is sacked
“Look at yourself first and then help each other. We’re in a mess at the moment, so we’ll help each other to get out of this mess. That’s just a fact. As champions, we can’t be in the situation we’re in right now, but that’s a fact. What are we going to do about it? We’re going to try to turn things around and that’s the mentality everyone should have.”
It’s about putting so many things forward and taking responsibility. So if you’re keeping count, it’s 1-1 for the slot and the player. Liverpool’s manager feels that his recent selection, tactics and substitutions have not gone well. Liverpool’s captain feels his players simply aren’t doing what’s expected of them.
Where is the truth? As is often the case, it’s somewhere in the middle. Van Dijk is in no way trying to throw the manager under the bus, but there is no doubt that Slott bears a lot of the blame for Liverpool’s disastrous title defence. The Dutchman has been involved to some extent in the splurge in the summer transfer window, and he is the one dictating the team and how they approach the game.
It was Slott who named Alexander Isak as the starter for Ugo Ekitike on Saturday. It is he who continues to play Liverpool’s most dynamic midfield threat, Dominik Szoboszlai, out of the right-back position, rather than relying on Joe Gomez to replace the injured Conor Bradley. In pursuit of the game, it was Slott who chose Milos Kerkes to play left-back instead of Andy Robertson and Ekitike in place of Ibrahima Konate.
However, many of Van Dijk’s criticisms were valid. He lamented that Liverpool were getting their fundamentals wrong, that Forest were “winning so many battles against us physically” and that the players did not press as a team to win the ball back. He also knows better than anyone that the centre-back pairing of himself and Konate is struggling.
There are lessons to be learned on both sides. If he is going to stick with Isak – which is understandable given his £125m cost – Slott will need to find a way to get the best out of him, as he is a marginal figure at the moment. He needs to get Mohamed Salah more involved.
Meanwhile, Van Dijk will probably have to lead another team meeting like the one that took place a month ago after the 2-1 defeat to Manchester United. As he himself said, “We got through it together, we won the league, everyone was a part of it and everyone was happy. When you go through tough times, you have to come together instead of blaming.”
Front up is the easy part. Now Liverpool need to come together and solve the problem. Because the game is going to be intense and it’s not going to get any easier.
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