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Liverpool are reeling from a nightmare week that saw them eliminated from the Champions League and lose the Carabao Cup final
This has been, by some distance, the most painful week of Liverpool’s season. A potential treble has been winnowed down to a single, solitary shot at a trophy following defeats to Paris Saint-Germain and Newcastle in the League Cup final on Sunday – but is Arne Slot to blame?
The season will still end with silverware, barring a quite unprecedented collapse, and to summon up any criticism of Slot is to question the methods of a manager who has built a likely unassailable 12-point lead in the Premier League, a feat which would have been beyond most Liverpool supporters’ wildest dreams seven months ago - but perhaps in putting such a strong league season together, Slot also undermined their hopes of winning even more…
Were Liverpool too tired in the League Cup final?
Liverpool had already played and beaten Newcastle twice this season, and you’d have had to work hard to find a bookmaker with any confidence that Eddie Howe’s team could win their first major domestic trophy in 70 long years – in the end, though, it was almost comfortable, a hairy period of injury time at the very end of the match notwithstanding.
Slot’s side, for their part, looked tired, lacking their usual sharpness and incision. They kept possession well enough for the most part, but struggled to create clear-cut chances or to get Mohamed Salah on the ball, while they were often ragged in defence. In short, they simply didn’t bear much resemblance to the side that had dominated the league.
The same was true towards the end of the eventual defeat on penalties to PSG in the Champions League. While the Reds worked hard to battle their way back into the tie in normal time, their performance weakened appreciably the longer the game dragged on, to the point that they were entirely toothless in extra time. Liverpool had felt like the better team in the second leg after a bright start, but it was PSG who finished the game at Anfield with more shots, more possession, more expected goals and, crucially, the win.
So… what happened? Well, the opposition had plenty to do with it, of course. PSG are the only team in Europe whose domination of their division exceeds Liverpool’s own, and their messy, ill-disciplined tendencies seems to have been steamrollered out of them by Luis Enrique. Newcastle, meanwhile, not only played like it was the biggest game of their lives (which it arguably was) but defended with a degree of focus and precision that hasn’t been seen all that often under Howe.
But as excellent as their opponents were, there’s no doubt that Liverpool have looked some way below their best over the past couple of weeks – and in these last two matches, it’s hard not to wonder if they were simply tired.
Arne Slot has rotated his team less than almost any other manager this season. His decision to pick out his strongest eleven and roll with it has put Liverpool in a remarkably strong position to win the league title, and should perhaps be above reproach on that basis alone, but given how listless Liverpool have seemed over two crucial games, one wonders if he may have taken it too far.
Overusing Salah and underusing Elliott and Quansah?
Looking back, the 3-1 win over Southampton in the Premier League seems like a turning point. Having just gone through a gruelling (and ultimately successful) midweek game in Paris, slot picked a near full-strength side for a home tie against the worst team in the division, with only Andrew Robertson and Alexis Mac Allister left out of the starting side – and both of them were brought on at half-time.
Liverpool dominated the game and eventually won with relative ease despite Will Smallbone’s opening goal just before the break. That goal seems to have spooked Slot into bringing his big guns on when perhaps they weren’t needed – the possession and chances were there, the game was under control, and it always looked likely that Liverpool would come back. It’s debatable whether Mac Allister and Robertson made all that much difference.
It must be granted that Salah did – he scored two of his team’s goals – but both came from the penalty spot and the odds were that any other forward would have scored one or both, enough to seal the tie. Was Salah really needed for the full 90 minutes? Has it been absolutely necessary for him to start every single game this season save for the Champions League group stage dead rubber against PSV?
In the end, Salah was unable to score or set up any goals against PSG and struggled to even get involved at Wembley – he only touched the ball 23 times, less than half of his average in Premier League matches, and didn’t get a single shot away after finishing a distant second in his personal battle with stand-in left-back Valentino Livramento.
Would he have made a bigger impact had he been a little fresher? It’s hard to know for sure, but the squad as a whole looked to be off the boil on Sunday after a tough run of games, and it probably didn’t help that when substitutes were called for, they had hardly played all season.
Take Harvey Elliott, a phenomenal talent who has made just four starts in all competitions this season, none of them in the Premier League. Could he have done more if he was playing regularly? Would Jarell Quansah have offered more at right-back at either end of the pitch if he’d had more than two league starts this season, one of which was on the opening day when he was hooked at half-time?
In deciding not to give Quansah more minutes and more chances earlier in the campaign, Slot may have put his side in a more difficult position when Trent Alexander-Arnold went down with injury – his replacement was simply a little rusty, as well as rather inexperienced.
When it came to the crunch (at least in two competitions), Liverpool lacked the cutting edge and whistle-to-whistle control of games which they have demonstrated so often this year, and it’s hard to find reasons for that other than having a team which was simply too weary to operate at its best when the chips were down.
Seeing as Liverpool only have one last front to compete on, Slot’s selection policy won’t do much harm down the home straight in the Premier League – and even if it did, the buffer it has bought them so far would likely prove to be quite sufficient. His methods have almost certainly won them the Premier League in his first season, so complaining about them seems a little excessive, but that doesn’t mean that he couldn’t have found more room for rest and rotation and perhaps improved Liverpool’s chances of success on multiple fronts as a result. This international break probably comes at a useful and rather restful time for the squad.
Related topics:Mohamed SalahArne SlotLiverpool FC
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