The Jekyll and Hyde label is one that has followed Liverpool on and off since Roy Evans sat in the manager’s office in Melwood, throughout Brendan Rodgers reign, and now unfortunately it has bitten again for Jurgen Klopp.
Quite why the club chose not to buy a player in the January transfer window, when the squad so obviously needed strengthening is a mystery. It was a nonsense to suggest not a single player of the required standard was available. Everyone has a price in football, but I suppose a new training ground won’t pay for itself….
When this Liverpool side is good, it purrs, when it is bad, quite frankly, it’s awful.
Against a Leicester side on its knees, Liverpool meekly helped them to their feet, losing battle after battle, poor in possession, and as we’ve seen time after time since the turn of the year, abject in defence. Lucas looked like what he really is, a midfielder past his best, playing central defence.
The time and space afforded to Jamie Vardy, who is struggling badly for form, was meat and drink to the forward, and it wasn’t long before he slipped in to score. He wasn’t the only red shirt who was poor, Roberto Firmino, lynchpin of Liverpool’s first XI, too often a peripheral figure, his fellow countryman Coutinho, goal aside, hasn’t reached a decent level since December.
I could go on, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, there is an obvious lack of leadership when things are going badly, a lack of physicality too often and a lack of game intelligence when it’s needed the most.
Worse still, the bench is so weak at times there is very little the manager can do to change games.
At 3-1, Leicester were happy to invite the Reds on and Sunday league it to Vardy down the other end while the clock ran down. Nothing new from them, nothing new from Liverpool.
It was as if Leicester remembered what won them the championship and Liverpool remembered why they finished 8th.
Arsenal next, with their own manager facing criticism recently, the Reds, could be tailor-made for them. One things for sure, Arsene Wenger won’t have a clue which ‘Liverpool’ he will face…
