John Aldridge branded Liverpool “naive” after their 3-2 defeat to Brentford on Saturday evening.
Liverpool’s Premier League title defence continued to unravel on Saturday evening as a 3-2 defeat to Brentford condemned Arne Slot’s side to a fourth consecutive league loss their worst run since 2021.
From five points clear at the top just a month ago, the reigning champions have tumbled to seventh, and with the gap to the summit threatening to stretch into double digits, belief in a turnaround is fading fast.
The Reds were undone inside five minutes at the Gtech Community Stadium. A long throw-in from Michael Kayode a well-documented Brentford weapon was inadequately defended, allowing Dango Ouattara to sweep home the opener.
It was a passage of play that left John Aldridge “boiling with frustration”. Writing in his Liverpool Echo column, the former striker took aim at goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili for conceding a throw-in in a dangerous area and failing to heed Brentford’s threat from such situations.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw Giorgi Mamardashvili play a couple of poor passes out wide to Conor Bradley to concede throw-ins in dangerous areas for Brentford inside the first few minutes,” Aldridge wrote.
“Dango Ouattara gets the early goal and then once more Liverpool are left with it all to do. Mamardashvili should have known about the throw-in problems that Brentford could cause and there will have been no shame in him pumping the ball long instead of difficult passes out wide to keep possession. It was so naive and it baffled me.
“It boiled my blood seeing it unfold and Virgil van Dijk and Slot both said after the game that defending long throws was something they worked on all week in training. Clearly not enough work went into that.”
Aldridge’s frustration was shared across the fanbase. Brentford’s use of long throws is hardly an unknown quantity, yet Liverpool appeared startled by it. Not one defender won the first header from Kayode’s delivery, and Ouattara’s close-range finish set the tone for another error-strewn evening.
That issue has become a running theme. Liverpool have now conceded inside the opening quarter-hour in four straight league games, often to near-identical patterns either from long balls, throw-ins or second-phase set pieces.
For all their late pressure, sparked only by Mohamed Salah’s stoppage-time goal to make it 3-2, Liverpool never truly looked like taking control. The urgency they showed in added time was absent for most of the match.
The Reds’ inability to marry control with defensive resilience has left them looking increasingly brittle. Slot’s Liverpool are yet to decide what kind of team they want to be the technical evolution he envisages remains out of sync with the league’s growing physicality.
The scale of Liverpool’s summer rebuild more than £450m invested across 10 new signings but the new-look squad still appears to be searching for cohesion. Injuries and rotation have prevented consistency, yet tactical indecision has played an equal role in the malaise.
Slot’s immediate task is to steady a listing ship. With Aston Villa visiting Anfield next weekend, the Dutchman faces a pivotal moment. By the time that fixture kicks off, Arsenal could be ten points clear at the top a gap that would make talk of a title defence sound almost fanciful before November has even begun.
Nine games remain before Christmas, a stretch that will define Liverpool’s season. Unless they rediscover the structure and aggression that underpinned last year’s title win, the sense of drift will only deepen.
As Aldridge’s outburst and Carragher’s critique underline, the problems are no longer about individual mistakes they’re systemic. Liverpool have been warned. Now they need to show they’ve listened.
