Steve Nicol believes Ibou Konate is the only Liverpool players that deserves some sort of credit for his performance during the 3-0 defeat to Brighton and reckons the Reds would’ve conceded ‘six or seven’ had it not been for the Frenchman.
Roberto De Zerbi’s side ran riot against the Anfield outfit and outclassed the FA Cup champions on the south coast.
Jurgen Klopp’s men were fortunate to see the scoreline goalless at half time but a brace from Solly March and a late Danny Welbeck strike inflifcted a second straight Premier League defeat on the Merseysiders.
“You name it, it went wrong,” Nicol told ESPN (via The Boot Room). “I guess the easiest thing for me to say would be that Konate, of the 11 players on the field, was the only one that actually showed what he is. Everybody else was so far off the pace and just not at the races.
“He was the only player on the team that didn’t embarrass himself. Without him, it would have been six or seven.”
The Seagulls deserve credit for what was a superb showing, but we made it easy for them with too many in a Red shirt throwing in a lacklustre performance.
Our midfield was walked through far too easily while the rest of our defence except from our No. 5 looked scared to make a tackle.
You can argue that the absence of Virgil van Dijk is being felt, but we threw in a similar performance during the first half of our clash with Brentford recently while the Dutchman was on the pitch.
Calls for a new midfielder to be signed are growing stronger and stronger after each game, but when you consider our form so far this season, more than one new signing is needed to get us out of this rut.
As well as Konate, we believe Alisson also deserves some sort of credit for his display at the Amex and we’re hoping for a much improved performance against Wolves on Tuesday to ensure our FA Cup defence continues.