Liverpool, Salah ‘missing’ one player as two stars are criticised in Galatasaray defeat

Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah and the whole team are “missing” new Real Madrid star Trent Alexander-Arnold, according to two pundits.

The Reds lost for the second time in four days on Tuesday night as a Victor Osimhen penalty gave Galatasaray a 1-0 win over Arne Slot’s side in the Champions League.

Crystal Palace scored a last-minute winner on Saturday as Liverpool lost 2-1 in the Premier League as they dropped their first points of the season at Selhurst Park.

Many observers think Liverpool had been lucky to win all five of their first five Premier League matches of the season, especially in their win over Newcastle at St James’ Park.

Liverpool could have easily lost by a bigger scoreline against Crystal Palace in their defeat on Saturday too, while their midfield once again looked disjointed against Galatasaray and their defence looked porous.

The Reds spent a lot of money in the summer to make their squad better with Jeremie Frimpong, Milos Kerkez, Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak some of the more eye-catching signings.

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But former Tottenham midfielder Jamie O’Hara doesn’t think there defence is as good as in recent years and is yet to be convinced by Frimpong and Kerkez.

O’Hara said on talkSPORT: : “Isak, Ekitike, Florian Wirtz, they are going to come good 100% the back. I’m not so sure about Frimpong, Kerkez and Konate. That doesn’t look like an improvement from what they’ve had in the past.”

Former Liverpool striker Dean Saunders added: “I’m not seeing this after the event either. I said this to you off the air, who’s the best passer of the ball, arguably, in the world? Trent.

“Do you think Salah is going to miss him? Because obviously, a lot of Salah service come from disguised passes that that he was on the same wavelength as Trent. How did he keep getting behind people? Because Trent would say, like, before I’ve even got the ball, start running.”

O’Hara replied: “Frimpong seems like someone who wants to run with the ball. He’s like a marauding full-back. Trent was more of a football player who would like to assist Salah, and that feels like that’s kind of gone out of their team.”

Saunders continued: “Yeah, yeah, you’re right, but both full-backs tonight had opportunities to pick people out in the box and didn’t.”

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When asked whether squad rotation was leading to individual mistakes, Liverpool boss Slot told reporters: “It’s difficult. There can be so many reasons why an individual makes an error pass or a mistake.

“What you see is, and I think I explained this many times, is that there are a few players from us that missed pre-season so you simply cannot play them every single [game]. Well, you can but then that could become a risk of players becoming injured.

“We have seen this more and more because the demands go up more and more and if the demands go up you have to prepare players for these demands. That means it is not always that I want to rotate but sometimes I need to because a player is not ready to play three times 90 minutes in seven or eight days.

“I like my squad so much but we don’t have 25 or 26 [players], so if we end up with two, three or four injuries, 15 or 16 players, where Rio [Ngumoha] and Trey [Nyoni] are two of these 15 or 16, need to play almost all the minutes and then things can become complicated

“But this is a decision we have made together, I completely believe in this, because if you have 25 it’s very hard to manage your squad. But as a result of that, with Hugo, Alex [Isak], Conor [Bradley] and [Alexis] Mac Allister not having the pre-season a player should have, that also results in the fact that I cannot play them every time.”