Liverpool- mentality monsters or mentality minnows?

Liverpool crashed out of the FA Cup despite signs of improvements

Liverpool are improving but are no longer the mentality monsters they were once characterised as. They earnt that title through playing with grit, with vigour, and with almighty resilience. The team now feels like a pile of Jenga blocks that resemble the leaning tower of Pisa; one wobble, and the whole structure collapses.

Below is an extract of Liverpool’s results in their title winning season, mainly their most important results during the best league campaign the club has ever produced.

What stands out to me is the lack of ‘comfortable’ wins. The Reds didn’t rampage their way to title victory, mullering teams week in week out; they played conservative football (as weird as using the words Liverpool and conservative in the same sentence may sound), and through mental strength, held on to tight leads, week in, week out. When they were struggling against Manchester United they held on for a draw; it feels like Liverpool in that position today would throw the game away 2-1, as they did on the weekend.

On Sunday, when the referee blew for full time, I stormed out the room and my face was, no exaggeration, hot with fury. But I haven’t been angry like that at all this season, despite the abject performances. This, on the most part, was actually a much better performance, certainly much better than the horror show at Brighton a few weeks ago. What made me lose my temper was seeing the players not earn the result they deserved from everything they put into the match because they cost themselves the match through their own stupidity and disorganisation.

There is no shame in losing to Brighton away. They are an incredible team. This was a hard fixture, not a home tie against a team 16^th in the Championship and led by Andy Carroll. There are hard lines in conceding the flukiest of flukiest goals in the form of the equalizer, which Ally McCoist somehow used as a reason to give Lewis Dunk man of the match, which is like owing Albert Einstein’s theories to his favourite breakfast cereal brand.

What is shameful is Liverpool’s game management at 1-1 and the goal they concede. The wobble begins with the Solly March opportunity, which is an incredible save by Alisson (again). How do Liverpool respond when the Jenga tower begins to shake? Whereas they used to steady the ship, they now start taking out all the wrong pieces. Stupid fouls, sloppy passing, baffling substitutions, and an absolutely pathetic attempt at defending a set piece; the tower comes crashing down.

On the substitutions, Thiago leaving the fray while Fabinho and Henderson are brought on to supposedly keep things solid, makes no sense to me. It’s like adding a Carolina Reaper to a beef chilli to cool it down. Klopp wasn’t to know Fabinho was about to put in a cameo that atrocious, but I just don’t understand why he was brought on. He’s so incredibly off form and so incredibly low on confidence.

Fabinho plays a massive role in Liverpool’s late collapse (yes, I saw it as a form of collapse, although Klopp disagrees); he makes a stupid foul (which he should be sent off), he’s all over the place, the wheels come off, and then Robertson makes a stupid foul, which leads to the fatal set piece.

I just can’t understand it. This isn’t about “van Dijk’s not there”- you can have a team of 5’4’’ Tariq Lampteys and still defend a set piece better than that. Liverpool weren’t beaten in the air, as they didn’t even give themselves a header to win. Positionally, they were a complete mess. How can not one, but two Brighton players bring the ball down and control it? How does Estupinan have space to control the ball, run a bit, then cross it? Where’s the pressure? It was like we had seven men.

We have Estupinan with so much space in front of him that he’s got his own mini football pitch, and at the same time, we have Fabinho and Konate marking each other in the middle of the box. The cross to Mitoma isn’t even that great, it’s a slow floater, and somebody should be heading the ball away before it gets to him. No one gets close, Gomez (who overall had a very good game) tries to do something but just ends up on all fours, facing the wrong with his arse in the air, like someone about to fart onto a lighter for a joke (at least that would be funny), and no one else is close enough to stop the shot. I will never understand how we let that goal go in. Never.

Clearly no lessons were learnt from Brentford, where we saw the exact same problem; players having time to take the ball down and shoot or cross after a ball has come in from a set piece; that shouldn’t be happening once, let alone twice in the same set piece situation.

This has been a bit of an emotional rant, but I’ve given the team the benefit of the doubt so many times this season, and I’ve understood when there’s been hard lines and I’ve even understood that players are ageing and suffering from last season, but it just hurt on Sunday to see them throw the game away like that, so easily, when they had done all that hard work, and at least earned themselves a replay.

Coming back to mentality, it also frustrates me how bad this team is at ‘revenge’; this was the third game against Brighton this season, and Klopp’s side got their pants pulled down yet again. That’s not a monster mentality. I don’t care how good Brighton are; they are only two points ahead of Liverpool in the league table. Eight goals conceded in three games is unacceptable.

As for revenge on Madrid…it’s not looking good. Liverpool didn’t manage it in May, but that was largely unfortunate, and I want to be proved wrong, but the Reds aren’t ruthless anymore. They aren’t relentless anymore. They aren’t hard to beat anymore. They’re far too easy to score against, and far too much fun to play against.

I’ve gone pretty hard on them in this piece, but this is just another one of many kicks up the arses the team has needed. Perhaps this needs to be the hardest kick, because they are actually heading in the right direction, but they need to cut out the nonsense, keep composed, and for god’s sake, work on defending those set pieces.

It felt like I was watching a normal Liverpool team again for a while, and it is clear the defence has been more solid since the 3-0 defeat at Brighton three weeks ago. Klopp has made the correct decision to drop Henderson and Fabinho and to try and bring the average age of the team down.

It’s now a case of staying concentrated and becoming more ruthless in front of goal; Gakpo is getting better, Jota will soon be back, Nunez should soon be fit to start, and as for Salah, he needs to fix up big time. Not good enough, and he knows it.

Another week to rest, rethink, and we go to Wolves (again) next Saturday.