The decision to trial a back five proved disastrous as Liverpool failed to record a single shot on target while maintaining just 26 per cent possession. Goals from Desire Doue and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia reflected a gulf in class that Carragher likened to a mismatch between top-flight and lower-league sides, noting that Slot's man-to-man system left his defenders covering too much ground.
"The manager has tried something but he’s got it massively wrong tactically, how he went about it," he explained. "It’s easy for me to say that after the event, but that’s what we do - we’re pundits, we speak after the game. They were actually more open with the back five than they would be with a back four because they went man-to-man all over the pitch and the three centre-backs had to cover the width of the pitch."