Salah, Van Dijk lead 10 Liverpool players experiencing worrying slumps this season
After a fourth defeat on the bounce for Liverpool, to Manchester United(?!) at Anfield(?!) on Sunday, saw Virgil van Dijk definitively added to the list of Reds players to have suffered a downturn from their title-winning campaign to this current crisis of a season, we thought it prudent to name and shame the 10 Liverpool players to have slumped this term.
We’ve included new signings, comparing what they’re doing for Liverpool against the performances which persuaded them to be signed by Liverpool, and have limited the list to those who have featured for more than 150 minutes across all competitions.
Florian Wirtz
It can’t feel great having started the season in August as a shiny new £100m player, that everyone was seeing as a Liverpool coup even at that price, to be watching his new side from the bench come October.
Even when Liverpool secured his signing ahead of Bayern Munich, despite the overriding belief being that Wirtz would prove to be an excellent addition, there weren’t many people suggesting what the Reds needed on the back of their title win was a new No.10.
The answer to the question ‘why sign Florian Wirtz?’ was inevitably based around the idea that he’s a generational talent not to be missed, rather than him being the best player in a position in which Liverpool needed to recruit.
And while Jurgen Klopp has warned those of us criticising Wirtz that we will soon “eat our words”, we now wonder just how monumental a change Slot will have to make to Liverpool’s style and system for us to be chomping on those insults.
Ibrahima Konate
Back to his old self against Manchester United as he attempted to soothe and coax the “baby” alongside him through the game, but he has put in a number of questionable displays this season, bordering on the calamitous at times.
He’s never looked like a particularly natural footballer, and having avoided getting his legs in a tangle and falling over at any minute with aplomb for so long, that does now appear to be a standard feature of Konate’s game.
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Dominik Szoboszlai
The player to have slumped least on this list – it’s a stretch to claim he has at all, in truth – and also perhaps the player least guilty for his own negligible decline.
Szoboszlai will have wondered at the start of the season, as we all did, how Arne Slot might fit him and Florian Wirtz into the same team. He will take solace and pride in playing the most minutes (990) along with Van Dijk, but wouldn’t have counted on Slot’s desperation to include him in the first XI seeing him shoehorned in at right-back.
Because he’s an attacking midfielder playing at right-back, he looks like an attacking midfielder playing at right-back.
Conor Bradley
Dubbed the heir apparent to Trent Alexander-Arnold after some hugely impressive displays last term, including a breakout game against Real Madrid which saw him nail Kylian Mbappe before slipping him into his pocket, after Liverpool signed Jeremie Frimpong to vie for his right-back spot, Bradley is now trying so hard to prove himself the main man in that position that he looks as though he’s on the verge of a red card in every single game he plays.
The 22-year-old has picked up five yellow cards in 390 minutes of football this season and has been hooked at half-time against both Crystal Palace and Chelsea. Just calm down, mate.
Jeremie Frimpong
We wonder if Arne Slot has at any point asked Richard Hughes why he signed him a right wing-back. There is literally no team in the Premier League worse suited to having Frimpong as their right-back.
The Dutchman hasn’t started a Premier League game since the opening-day victory over Bournemouth, when Slot clearly realised the dangers of playing someone who is more a winger than a full-back behind a guy who doesn’t defend and never will in Mohamed Salah.
Like Szoboszlai, Frimpong’s slump isn’t really on him, but whoever thought his signing made any sense whatsoever.
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Virgil van Dijk
“We conceded a very sloppy second goal,” said Van Dijk when asked why they lost to Manchester United. Can’t fault his logic – it was the winner – but what about the first goal, mate?
“I think the ball went long, first header was a United player, second by me. My elbow hit the player and he goes down and I went down. From that angle, it was difficult to score and he did. There was plenty of football left to be played [and score] and we didn’t.”
We counted three Van Dijk mistakes – bad header, lame tackle, jogging back – and four if we include him flattening his own player; five with the vague pointing to Bryan Mbeumo. But no responsibility taken for what was an absolute balls-up on his part for that opening goal, nor for what was one of his worst-ever Liverpool performances after that.
He does indeed need to “look in the mirror”.
Alexis Mac Allister
When a team goes from complete control one season to something approaching chaos the next you’ve got to look at the players most responsible for conducting play and setting the tempo. And with Ryan Gravenberch’s level remaining high this term, the finger of blame has to be pointed at Mac Allister.
Perhaps owing to an obscene workload for club and country, as well as a pre-season injury which set him back, he’s currently playing like a very old 26-year-old.
Milos Kerkez
We don’t know whether it’s his inability to take tactical instruction on board, to put it into action, or maybe Slot’s poor guidance (though we doubt that) but Kerkez evidently hasn’t got much of a clue where he’s supposed to be at any given time or what he’s supposed to be doing.
At one point in the Manchester United game he ran a full 60 yards to charge down Senne Lammens in goal, presumably just to show willing to offset the widely held belief after 12 games that he’s not cut out to play for Liverpool.
Alexander Isak
My ever-so-slightly potty Grandma might have informed Isak that this fall from grace on the back of his transfer-forcing downing of tools is the work of his “guardian angel”, her suggestion being that said benevolent messenger acts more as a courier of karmic justice than a winged friend sitting on your right shoulder to guide and protect.
Slot sharpened the knives for us ahead of the United game by declaring Isak’s delayed pre-season over, and the 26-year-old offered himself up for jabs by missing one golden opportunity, scuffing another chance and doing little else.
Mohamed Salah
The biggest nosedive of all owing to the dizzying heights of last season, and the previous seven seasons.
The typical suggestion that a 33-year-old’s level has dipped as a result of that age does very little to explain such an extraordinary downturn. Salah has gone from the Premier League’s deadliest forward, a man who finished fourth in the Ballon d’Or, to someone who’s kicking the ball with the wrong part of his boot.
It’s obviously down to a combination of factors, including Trent Alexander-Arnold’s departure, a shift in the Liverpool style to play to the strengths of Wirtz and others, as well as maybe his age, though we doubt it, or complacency having been handed a huge new contract, which we doubt even more.
