John Aldridge reflects on Liverpool's attacking woes and looks ahead to their League Cup clash with Spurs in the second half of his weekly column
Alexander Isak
Alexander Isak
View Image
Liverpool weren’t great offensively against Fulham. We had a £400m attack with three players costing over £100m, and only had three shots on target to show for it.
It’s not clicked. It’s not clicked yet, the attack. But what does Andoni Iraola do? Change system? Well, he can't, he won’t because he's always coached in this system that he likes.
He's got to fit the players in. It's a little bit like a jigsaw puzzle. Putting it together. The pieces didn't fit from last year.
On paper when we got them, we were going, "Wow! Great buys." And they are. Look, Alexander Isak’s a fantastic finisher. He's a really good finisher.
Florian Wirtz is a really good player, but it's not the Bundesliga. He's still trying to find his feet and things haven't gone for him. He hasn't had the best of luck.
Bradley Barcola has only just started, we’ve got to give him time. He can play, of course he can. Once teams know how you play, they do their utmost to stop you.
Look at Mo Salah, three players around him every time we got the ball. So he's going to have to be good.
But it's not his fault Liverpool paid £123million for him. Like Isak, it's not his fault, and it's not Wirtz's fault. It just is what it is. We'll just have to wait and see.
Give him time, a little bit of time. Even though at this moment in time, we want things to happen straight away, because that's the way it is in football. But he might need time.
Look, the French league is average, with all due respect. It's crap compared to the Premier League. You’ve got Paris Saint-Germain and that’s it.
He's going to another level. He's played in Europe. He knows the score against really good teams, but the Premier League is tough. It's the best league in the world. That's why they pay the fees that they do for television.
Don't expect him to win his games on his own just yet. It'd be nice if he does, though. I'll say that. But we have to be patient with him.
The one thing I'll say about Isak, I don't like him going out in wide areas when he doesn't have to be there. He's got to stay really for most of the game between the 18-yard box width.
If he goes out wide looking to put balls into the box, there's going to be no-one in there. He has to be moving people a bit more.
I'm not being overly critical of him. He's got to work the centre-halves more by movement. Taking them where they don't want to go and keeping them moving, because that's when he'll get that little half-chance to get his goal.
He's got to move more in between the 18-yard box width, for me. He is a good finisher. If he does that, and gets to the back post when the ball's coming in, he'll score more goals. Like we saw Haaland score in the Manchester derby. That's not rocket science.
In my opinion, he needs to move more, move the centre-halves about and take them where they don't want to go to create space for himself and the chances will follow.
They've got to persevere and Iraola has got to make it happen. Otherwise, he’s going to have to change the jigsaw again next year. But that's drastic.
They’ve just got to keep on working, keep on working away and hopefully, something clicks.
Rotate but rotate the right way
I'm old school, and I'm looking at our options this year. Our options are to finish in the top four and win a cup.
When we won the League Cup against Chelsea with all the kids on the pitch, I got a buzz out of that. I got such a massive buzz on that day. The way they went about it, it was a great final and the kids, it was amazing, absolutely amazing.
So, whilst people say you've got to rotate, and I get that, we've got to win the game. The League Cup and the FA Cup are probably our best chances of doing something, of winning something this season.
So let's hope the manager makes the right decisions. Tottenham aren’t in Europe. They'll want to win the cup, so they'll be strong.
And I remember last year, when we got knocked out by Palace, they were strong. We weren't strong enough to cope with them, and I wouldn't like to see that again.
So, it's hard for the manager. I know whilst people think he's got to rotate, he's got to rotate the right way.