‘Not at the races’ – Steve Nicol absolves two Liverpool players from blame for Reds’ woeful form

Steve Nicol has absolved two Liverpool players from blame for the Reds’ abysmal form over the past month, along with expressing more than a degree of sympathy for Arne Slot.

The Premier League champions have now lost four games in a row in the division, and only a late Mo Salah goal put a more respectable facade on the final scoreline of 3-2 away to Brentford on Saturday.

Jamie Carragher has used the word ‘crisis‘ to summarise everything that’s going wrong for his former club right now, while Gary Neville warned that results will continue to suffer if the head coach persists with players who’ve been underperforming.

Nicol absolves Liverpool duo from criticism

Nicol cut Slot a bit of slack by claiming that the Dutchman has tried various combinations throughout his line-up and attempted to tweak his tactics during games, but largely to no avail, and the pundit believes that’s on the players as much as the boss.

The former Reds defender did exempt Dominik Szoboszlai and Giorgi Mamardashvili from criticism, though, saying on ESPN FC: “If you’re Arne Slot, you’ve got no choice but to make changes, because there’s nobody on the field telling him ‘I need to stay here, or I’m going to do anything’.

“Part of that chaos is forced upon Arne Slot. He’s forced to make all these changes. At the end of the game when they lose, and they lose the way they did, it looks like a schoolboy team – ‘Just get him on, put him on, you go here, you go there’.

“Szoboszlai played in three different positions in one game, again! But Arne Slot’s got no choice, because nobody, nobody is performing for him at all, apart from maybe Szoboszlai and the goalkeeper. The rest are just not at the races at all.”

Szoboszlai and Mamardashvili have been among our better performers

The team as a whole needs to vastly improve if Liverpool are to even come close to troubling the title race this season, and that responsibility falls on every single player in the squad, even those who’ve been our best performers of late.

Nicol is right to single out Szoboszlai, one of the very few who can feel satisfied with his individual performance against Brentford and who, despite being shunted from pillar to post in terms of his positions in matches, has maintained a good standard in recent weeks.

Mamardashvili was also one of our better performers on Saturday, pulling off a couple of strong saves and often getting no help from a porous defence in front of him, although he perhaps could’ve done better for Kevin Schade’s goal.

The Georgian has come into the team in the absence of Alisson Becker with Liverpool at a low ebb, and while we’re obviously missing the imperious presence of our long-serving number 1, the current starter hasn’t had any major errors since being thrust into the action over the past month.

In addition to the duo that Nicol mentioned, Curtis Jones has done little wrong in recent games, and his injury against Brentford compounded the Reds’ woes from the night.

Some of Slot’s line-up decisions and use of substitutions have been perplexing – Joe Gomez for Florian Wirtz on Saturday seemed a very strange one – but the head coach can’t legislate for basic individiual errors on the pitch. Both he and the players as a whole can do so much better.