Jamie Redknapp said after Liverpool’s defeat to Chelsea on Saturday evening that two Reds players are causing ‘problems’ for Arne Slot’s side.
The Premier League champions were consigned to a third defeat in eight days as they lost to a stoppage-time goal from Estevao at Stamford Bridge, and their woes intensified as Andy Roberson was seen limping off the pitch at full-time.
Of the four defenders who were selected to start for the Merseysiders against Enzo Maresca’s side, three were substituted by the 56th minute, with Conor Bradley withdrawn at half-time and Ibrahima Konate and Milos Kerkez both making way early in the second half.
Redknapp: Full-back positions are a ‘problem’ for Liverpool
Speaking on Sky Sports after the match, Redknapp pinpointed the full-back positions as ‘problems’ for Liverpool and suggested that Trent Alexander-Arnold is a significant loss from last season’s squad.
The former Reds midfielder said: “They’ve got problems at full-back. They’re missing Trent. They haven’t played the same right-back since the Burnley game. Bradley had a tough 45 minutes. Kerkez hasn’t quite adapted either – the pressure of playing for Bournemouth isn’t the same.
“They have problems all over the pitch but especially at full-back with Robertson’s injury at the end. This international break could be a good chance to reset.”
Bradley and Kerkez struggled against Chelsea
Bradley and Kerkez are only 22 and 21 respectively, so we don’t want to crucify either of them, but the harsh truth is that neither had a particularly good outing against Chelsea this evening.
The right-back was given the runaround by Alejandro Garnacho in the first half and was on a yellow card when he was substituted, although the Argentine winger’s playacting to try and get the Northern Ireland defender sent off was shameful.
Meanwhile, the Hungarian was culpable of poor decision-making when squaring the ball rather than taking a shot and also miscued an attempted pass to Mo Salah in a promising position, being withdrawn early just as he was against Burnley last month.
While Kerkez has been a regular starter so far this season, he hasn’t looked the same player as he did for Bournemouth. On the other side of defence, Slot has been chopping and changing between Bradley, Jeremie Frimpong and Dominik Szoboszlai, which is far from ideal this deep into the campaign.
As Redknapp says, the Liverpool head coach will have to use the international break to simply reset and see what can be done to get a tune out of the ailing Premier League champions when they reconvene later in October.
If we lose szobo then we will have real issues.
Fingers crossed we don’t.
We’ll weather this squall. Too much quality to fall backwards.
Personally last season slot won the league with klopps players and he knew that! So he gor rid of some great talent like Luis Diaz who im afraid were missing big time and to some extent nunez for his pace, ..he’s signed too many new players altogether and his expecting to get straight away
Exactly. We now have a group of individuals that need to learn to play as a team
Slot didn’t get rid of Diaz. Diaz wanted to leave .
We’ve had problems down the right flank for a long time when Trent was here. The problem is we are missing the energy of Diaz and Nunez running back to help in defence. Any full-back will have problems if he is left one-on-one