It can always get worse, but things surely look like they’ve reached a place as low as it can be when Liverpool are concerned. On Saturday at the Molineux, Wolverhampton Wanderers took full advantage of their situation, with an own-goal by Joel Matip, a strong finish from close range by Craig Dawson and a counterattack finished off by Ruben Neves secured a 3-0 victory for the home side.
While Matip’s own-goal can be put down as bad luck, the second was a direct consequence of miscomunication between Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson Becker and defender Joe Gomez, and the third was the result of Thiago Alcantara, who played an uncharacteristically poor match, failing to track Neves’s run into the box as Adama Traore broke down the right flank and squared the ball for his midfielder to slam home.
With all due respect to Wolves and not wanting to take anything away from their deserved victory, there isn’t much to be said about their game. But there is plenty to be said about Liverpool and their predicament.
The magnitude of the problem
While the fact that Brighton and Hove Albion are now a very formidable team, capable of causing problems for even the best opponents out there, can to an extent explain the 3-0 defeat Liverpool suffered at the Amex last month, this was a very different situation. Wolves can’t be said to have played a particularly great game, they just played it at an average level for a professional team in a top-level league, and that was too strong for this Liverpool team to deal with.
That poses a question, one that few in the world of football would’ve expected so quickly to come for a team that only last season won both English cups, missed out on the Premier League title by a single unhappy point and lost the Champions League final to a team that they actually outplayed on the evening: who can they beat, if an average team can put three unanswered goals past them? Where will they find the points they need to turn things around?
It’s an extremely worrying sign for the six-time European and 19-time English champions.
It may happen that the long-awaited return of Roberto Firmino, Virgil van Dijk, Diogo Jota and Luis Diaz brings improvement. It’s only logical that having four such high-quality players back in the ranks should make a difference, but by then it will probably be too late to even dream about a place in next season’s Champions League. It might even be too late for the two lower-rated UEFA competitions.
The players, mostly in the midfield section but elsewhere as well, seem burnt out, bereft of their once formidable desire to win, to press, to fight tooth-and-nail for every ball between the first and the final whistle. The moto “Never Give Up”, so iconic since the injured Mohamed Salah wore it on his shirt ahead of one of the greatest comebacks in the history of the Champions League, appears to have evaporated.
Is there a solution?
When it comes to saving the season, it really feels too late. All Liverpool can do is make sure they arrest the drop when the injured players return, and if they can’t stop conceding, at least they might start scoring again, given that three of the four most notable on that list are forwards.
Finishing outside the European places might be the break they need, the chance to repeat the 2016/17 season, which was the one when their incredible climb under Klopp really began. They should still be able to attract the profile of players they need – highly talented and relatively young, players who can wait a season to start a march which could potentially lead them to Champions League glory.
Money will be a bigger issue. Owners Fenway Sports Group have made it known that they want new investors to come in, and while they claim its only a minority investment that they seek, journalists who have dug deep into the matter believe a full sale is more likely to happen.
Having signed forward Cody Gakpo from PSV Eindhoven for a reported fee of around £40 million, the club refused to address issues in other areas, despite the glaring problems plaguing the midfield. It’s all well and nice, going in big for Borussia Dortmund star Jude Bellingham in the summer, but the 19-year-old English international, as brilliant as he is, will hardly be able to solve all the problems by himself. That’s quite apart from the fact that most supporters aren’t able to forgive the owners and the board for not giving thought to this season and loosening the purse to sign a midfielder in January.
Apart from Bellingham, Liverpool were strongly linked with Enzo Fernandez, who only left Benfica for Chelsea in the end because the Blues paid his €120m release clause, and Moises Caicedo, for whom Brighton refused all offers despite his own public wish to leave. Sometimes it makes sense to wait for the preferred targets to become available, as the Merseysiders showed the world when they landed Van Dijk in January 2018 after an unsuccessful pursuit the previous summer. But the failure to land Aurelien Tchouameni in 2022 also provided lessons to be learned.
With the possibility of bringing in fresh legs in the middle of the park now gone, it would probably make sense for Liverpool to simply write this season off and draw a line under it, before embarking on a major reconstruction project in the summer.
The standings and upcoming games
This defeat has seen Liverpool drop to 10th place, with Chelsea moving one point ahead after their goalless draw against Fulham on Friday. The Reds are exactly halfway between the top four and the relegation zone, with their tally of 29 points poorer than fourth-place Newcastle’s by 11, and better than that of city rivals Everton in 18th by the same distance.
As for Wolves, they remain clear of the relegation zone with two points more than Everton, who boosted their own chances of survival by beating league leaders Arsenal on Saturday.
The Toffees, whom Liverpool face next in the Merseyside Derby at Anfield, have replaced Frank Lampard in the dugout with Sean Dyche, and the Burnley connection has already yielded results with the winning goal against Arsenal created by Dwight McNeil and scored by James Tarkowski, both former charges of Dyche’s at Turf Moor.
Wolves, on the other hand, head into a pair of matches against direct rivals in the relegation fight, as they prepare to travel to Southampton before welcoming Bournemouth to the Molineux. This triumph over Liverpool will surely help their morale ahead of such important games.
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