**Pundit Micah Richards says four of Liverpool’s big signings last summer have flattered to deceive.**
When asked to diagnose where things have gone wrong for Arne Slot’s side this season on _The Rest Is Football_ podcast, Richards pointed the finger at the new recruits:
“I think where the scrutiny comes is the signings. They’ve not worked. Isak has been injured, Wirtz has not been at the level we all expect, Frimpong is your right winger, your right-back, it’s not really working out.”
“Kerkez has been a shadow of the player who was at Bournemouth. I don’t know if that’s pressure or if that’s the system.”
“Liverpool are too slow, too passive, they’re too easy to play against. What you normally associate Liverpool with is being aggressive, hard to beat, work-rate, especially under Klopp, and they’re none of those things.”
The new signings are playing in a broken team
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While it is easy to blame the club’s transfer business last summer, the problems go deeper than that, and Richards hints at what the main cause is.
The Reds have simply become too passive. The press is half-hearted, and the players don’t seem able to play as aggressively as they once did.
Slot and the club’s recruitment team have signed players for a different style of play, and this season, the team has looked broken as a result. They’re not suited for a Klopp-style gegenpress, nor are they able to be purely a possession-based team.
Will more signings transform Liverpool?
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Some have argued that the club is going through a transition. Plenty of the old guard, such as Mo Salah, Andrew Robertson, [**Alisson**](https://walkon.com/blog/liverpool-transfer-news-diogo-costa-james-trafford-robin-roefs-bart-verbruggen/) and even Virgil van Dijk, are no longer as good as they once were.
It means there has to be a turnover in the squad, with new players arriving and taking over. It is, therefore, felt that additional recruits are needed to complete the process. Whether Slot will be given the time for this all to play out, though, it’s up for debate.
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