A poor performance, a bad result and 4 losses on the bounce. Not many LFC fans would believe you if you had said that the Reds would be in this predicament, even one month ago.
Arne Slot and his men fall to a 2-1 defeat at Anfield, allowing their biggest rivals to win their first successive games this season.
It was an entertaining watch, with a lot of goalmouth action, some of which would not have been appreciated by the LFC fans and coaches.
Neither team looked better than the other, with Liverpool dominating the ball and creating a few chances, but so did Man Utd with their limited possession.
It was a really bad day at the office, and is a troubling sign of problems they’ve had most of the season. Here are three things that went wrong for the Reds.
1. Attacking Formation
We didn’t get to see the offensive shape of Liverpool until five minutes in after the early Man Utd goal and time for the game to settle down once again.
When the shape was finally allowed to mould itself, it looked odd. Slot lined up five Liverpool players up against the five Man Utd defenders, with Isak, Szoboszlai, Mac Allister, Gakpo and Salah all pinning themselves up against the United backline.
It appears this was done to allow space for Kerkez, Bradley or anyone out wide to have more space and time in the wide areas.
Problem with that though… the ball must get out there quickly and all the time, this just didn’t happen.
Ryan Gravenberch was tasked to be the sole man in midfield with this shape, a similar look to a quarterback in American Football, and the burden of finding the right pass fell on him and, to a lesser extent, the two centre-backs.
The shape just didn’t work, the five players up top often had to pull out from the front and bounce it back to the player who passed it, very rarely did the player get on the half-turn and look to play, a situation Florian Wirtz would be perfect for. The one time this didn’t happen, Isak really should have scored.
Another result of the puzzling offensive formation was what looked to be the wrong players in the right place.
In the end this didn’t lose the game for LFC, but it certainly made it more difficult, it was extremely ineffective.
2. Poor Quality in Dangerous Areas
One thing that was talked about before the season and during the first few weeks, a surplus of attacking quality, with the signings of Isak and Wirtz this was to be believed, it seemed as though LFC would never look lost for goals and quality.
Well, that belief was not the case today. Mo Salah and goal scorer, Cody Gakpo, both had a lot of the ball and both did very little with it.
Alexander Isak had the best opportunity of the game, a wonderful pass by Konate in behind the defence of Utd, led Isak one-on-one and his shot was saved.
Mo Salah in particular looks to be a real concern for Slot and his team, the Egyptian has had a poor start to the season and today’s game was no different.
Loose touches, a real lack of drive in his play and missing guilt-edged chances, the winger looked amateur at times.
3. Defensive Frailties
Something that has been a feature of this season and was the same today, the defence looked shaky.
To be fair to Ibrahima Konate though, the opposite can be said about him, the Frenchman looked to be back to his imperious best.
With that being said, there are four in the LFC backline and three of them put in below par performances.
Kerkez still looks unsettled, with some signs of promise. On the whole though, he needs to show some consistency in his performances.
By the impeccably high standards of Virgil van Dijk, today’s game was far from the norm. Finally, right-back Conor Bradley had a quiet and indifferent performance with little impact on the game on either side of possession.
It all looked very easy for Man Utd to break through with both goals, an early lapse of judgement from the centre-backs let them in for the first goal, and there was a complete lack of communication for the winning goal.
It is a worrying trend of the season so-far and one that Arne Slot must stop if Liverpool want any success.