In his latest column, John Aldridge looks at Liverpool's dismal Premier League defeat at Manchester City and the controversy over their disallowed goal
Liverpool head coach Arne Slot with Cody Gakpo (left) and Joe Gomez after the Premier League match at Manchester City on November 9 2025
Liverpool head coach Arne Slot with Cody Gakpo (left) and Joe Gomez after the Premier League match at Manchester City on November 9 2025
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I was sat watching the game on Sunday against Manchester City with my family and friends. And I simply couldn’t believe what I was seeing from Liverpool.
I thought after the recent wins over Aston Villa and Real Madrid that we were back on track. How wrong I was.
Arne Slot picked the same team as against Real Madrid in midweek and I am never one who likes to use tiredness as an excuse, especially when City played the day after and didn’t make loads of changes to their team.
But something was massively wrong with Liverpool in the first half. We looked petrified.
Whatever the teamtalk was or the gameplan, it surely didn’t involve us showing City so much respect. It was far, far too much.
We just didn’t compete. And the basic defending was absolutely shocking.
Just look at Ibrahima Konate’s performance. For the penalty, Conor Bradley was in control of the situation so I have no idea what Konate was doing coming across and making problems where there weren’t any.
With Erling Haaland missing from the spot, we got away with that one. But we just didn’t heed that warning and ended up conceding two goals that could so easily have been avoided.
The cross for the first should have been closed down but even then Konate only needed to head the ball away properly and couldn’t even do that.
The second one was unlucky with the deflection, but why weren’t Liverpool’s players closing down Nico Gonzalez? He was given all that space. It was completely needless.
We just didn’t compete in our individual battles, we didn’t win enough second balls and going forward we were a nonentity. It was so, so disappointing to watch after what happened on Tuesday.
In the second half we were a lot better, but at 2-0 down you really need to be scoring the next one and we didn’t do that. We absolutely got what we deserved.
We made Jeremy Doku look like Pele. To be fair, he had a great game but Bradley was left isolated one-on-one all the time.
Compare that to how City dealt with Mohamed Salah, always having two around him to help back up full-back Nico O’Reilly.
When Liverpool won at City last season, Ryan Gravenberch and Salah were always dropping back to help out Trent Alexander-Arnold at right-back. Why did that change?
Going back to Konate, he has been so inconsistent this season it is frightening. He does some brilliant things then does some schoolboy things – there doesn’t appear to be a lot in between.
Some of his decision-making drives me crazy, and it might well be time to take him out of the team for a bit. Joe Gomez had bided his time and he deserves a chance.
Konate was good against Villa and Real Madrid but he’s really taken a step back. All the talk over him not signing a contract and potentially moving is clearly affecting him.
Ref justice for Reds
When Liverpool had their goal disallowed at Manchester City, I wasn’t surprised to discover Michael Oliver was involved as the VAR.
Many officials would have deemed Virgil van Dijk’s header a goal and said Andy Robertson was not interfering with play while in an obvious position.
Indeed, City themselves had a similar goal allowed at Wolves last season.
Oh, and it can’t be deemed sour grapes as Liverpool didn’t deserve to be back in the game at that point.
But it would have been a massive turning point, and getting in level at half-time would have made for a very different game. The officials may well now have some explaining to do.