Liverpool can’t seem to build a consistent run of winning form and Jamie Carragher has taken aim at two people he believes are contributing to this failure.
It looked as though the end of Liverpool’s atrocious form was finally in sight, after impressive victories against Aston Villa and Real Madrid.These wins followed a rough period which saw the Reds fall to defeat in six of their seven fixtures in all competitions.
However, Liverpool are left with issues to resolve once more, after being blown away by Manchester City in a 3-0 thumping last Sunday.
According to club legend Jamie Carragher, Arne Slot must bear the responsibility for his teams’ current struggles.
He told The Overlap: “I do think Liverpool, the people behind the players and the manager, they’ve tried to take a team of last season that won the league, but in Slot’s eyes, he wanted it to be more sexy, more gold, more entertaining.”
Carragher believes Slot is attempting to get his team playing a modern style of football, but the Premier League has headed in the opposite direction. As a result, Liverpool have found themselves playing catch up with the other teams in the English top flight.
“He’s always speaking about Paris Saint Germain,” Carragher continued.
“He loves Pep [Guardiola]. You hear him speak about Pep before the game, his hero is Pep. So you know he’s trying to move that team here to more football and more goals, and the league’s moved that way.
“So the league’s gone powerful, set pieces, long throws, almost like a throwback to the 2000s or dealing and Liverpool have been left behind, and they’ve almost just got it wrong in terms of where the game’s going, and I think that’s been a big problem for them.”
Slot is not the only Liverpool man to have fallen out of Carragher’s favour. The ex-defender also holds reservations about Florian Wirtz, who has struggled to replicate his displays in Germany at Anfield.
Carragher previously called for Wirtz to be taken out of the first-team and he still has his concerns. However, the player-turned-pundit has seen moments from the midfielder which have made him hopeful for the future.
He said: “But Garth, I wanted to ask you about [Florian] Wirtz. Now I was worried about Wirtz early on, not because he wasn’t amazing.
“But I also think when you pay that much money for someone, I just want to see a few glimpses of something that I think, oh, okay, I know he’s not the Bayer Leverkusen version, that will come in a few months, when he gets up to speed, but I can see little things.
“That was early on. I’ve seen a few little things, the backheel at Chelsea, he played well against Real Madrid.”
However, Carragher has outlined where Wirtz is struggling the most and he sees this as a real problem.
Despite Wirtz’s strong performances in the Champions League, he has struggled to prove himself as an attacking threat in the Premier League.
“My worry about Wirtz is that when people say, oh he’s got to get used to his teammates and stuff like that. He’s actually played well in Europe, but it’s a different game to the Premier League,” Carragher added.
“So he’s played really well. I think away from home, was it Frankfurt? Played really well against Real Madrid at home, but he’s found it really tough in the Premier League, and I worry about him sort of going forward. I get it’s early days, but I need to see something to keep me going that this, you know, will work.”
Slot now has the international break where he can decide if his tactics up to this point have been effective, or whether something needs to change.
Along with this comes the decision of continuing to play Wirtz, or making a statement by dropping him until the 22 year old’s performances improve.
