Ronnie Whelan was critical of Liverpool’s defence during the 4-4 draw against Greuther Furth on Monday afternoon.
The former Reds midfielder was particularly unimpressed with the manner of the second goal for the German side as Lukas Petkov capitalised on hesitant defending to spark a flurry of three goals in nine minutes for his team on their way to overturning a 3-1 deficit.
The ex-Republic of Ireland international was on punditry duty for LFC TV today, and he voiced his frustration with how the fifth goal of a rollercoaster game developed, namechecking Joel Matip and Kostas Tsimikas as two who bore some culpability.
Whelan fumed: “That looked offside for me. But let’s go on to what happened every that. Every Liverpool player stops, Matip makes a bad clearance.
“He should get this away. Either kick it out for a corner, but he tries to be smart with the outside of the right foot. Then everybody stops, Tsimikas has a go at the forward and again it’s too easy to score goals against Liverpool.”
Even though pre-season is traditionally an experimental period where numerous players and combinations are tried out, the manner in which Liverpool gave up some of their goals today will worry Jurgen Klopp.
Matip in particular was far too casual in the lead-up to Petkov’s goal, and it wasn’t just Whelan who honed in on the Cameroonian either, with the Liverpool Echo’s Ian Doyle also critical of the centre-back in his post-match player ratings.
The Reds shipped 49 goals in the Premier League last term, the most in any of their seven full seasons under their current manager (Transfermarkt), and it’s telling that we continue to be linked with central defenders in the transfer market.
Thankfully we still have three more pre-season games to work on tightening up at the back ahead of the resumption of competitive action in 20 days’ time, so hopefully we’ll see better defensive displays against Leicester, Bayern Munich and Darmstadt over the next fortnight.
#Ep82 of The Empire of the Kop Podcast: Who do Liverpool replace Henderson & Fabinho with?
It’s pre season, the players have been doing triple sessions, they were playing a team on the verge of starting their league season, so we’re at full fitness. If the players didn’t look heavy legged, then it would mean that the pre season program was to light.
Not too much to worry about and we didn’t learn anything we didn’t already know.
On the plus side, Darwin looks really sharp, Doak and Bradley were better than the senior players that replaced them and Pitaluga got some minutes