The winners and losers from Liverpool's defeat to Wolves

Liverpool dropped points and fell slightly off the pace in the race for the Champions League on Tuesday night at Molineux.

A style of performance we’ve seen too often this season from the Reds, but who were the biggest winners and losers of this performance?

Winners

Wolverhampton Wanderers

It’s hard to look past the winning team as the biggest beneficiaries from Tuesday. A game, if we’re being honest, they had no business winning.

Once again, a team with a low block walks away with something against Arne Slot’s Reds, and there are only so many times the higher-ups will allow it to happen before stepping in.

That isn’t to say Wolves played without any quality. Ladislav Krejci had a brilliant game at centre half. Whenever we looked like showing some competency going forward, he was there to make sure it didn’t amount to anything.

Joao Gomes’ bank account could walk away the biggest winner. A move to a top-level European club is absolutely on the cards for the young Brazilian. 

He pocketed Gravenberch in the first half and showed composure alongside high-level technical midfield play against, on paper, world-class centre mids. Could be a serious player.

They took advantage of the frantic end and deserved to win the game.

Neutral fans who stayed awake until the 75th minute

Fans outside of these two fan bases would have been struggling to keep their eyes open for 75% of this match. 

Wolves were happy to let us have the ball, comfortable defending our best attempts and would have been happy with a point.

That was exactly how the game was going; it had all the makings of a bore-draw, but one ball over the top of our back four changed the complexion entirely.

They scored the first goal of the game from that, and what ensued was breakneck, end-to-end football. 

Loose passes, attacking runs and a crowd that was behind everything. The game had sparked into life, but the fact that it takes going 1-0 down to the team at the bottom of the table says copious amounts about this current Liverpool team.

That’s not a tactical reaction; that is the reaction of a proud team that is about to be embarrassed if they don’t try something else. 

Slot hooking Konate for Federico Chiesa didn’t magically make us play better; it was the emotion of the lads out there who, in the end, lost anyway.

Losers

Slot’s ‘lets make sure we don’t lose’ tactics

People have been quick to gloss over Liverpool’s recent performances with stats. Losing 2 out of 21 sounds extremely impressive, but without the context of our performances, it’s a moot point.

We set out not lose games of football, not to win them. That style of play is fine for a team looking to pick up extremely precious points; it’s also the mentality of a team quite low in confidence, especially at the business end of the park.

Take our first 45 minutes tonight, for example. I’ve seen that same 45 minutes maybe 15-20 times this season. It was like this at times last year, too. The only difference was that we came out to play in the 2nd half, but this year, it’s just more of the same.

Sure, they’ll push a little harder for the first 10-15 minutes of the 2nd half, but when that eventually doesn’t work, we’re lost.

We’ve bought attacking full-backs and keep them on leashes. We’ve got press-focused midfielders who’ve been made terrified by getting caught out during a press in the opposition shelf so instead, they get caught out with a ball through the lines.

We have a set of wingers whose confidence and impact are at levels I’ve rarely seen at this club. 

Slot is so scared of dropping points, he’s not playing to the strengths of the players we have. Sometimes we snatch a late winner, like the Forest game. Sometimes we lose embarrassingly, like tonight.

No one is expecting Slot to be here forever; chances are, he won’t make it through the summer. At least go out with a fight, not a whimper.

Cody Gakpo

I’m running out of ways to describe my disappointment in Cody Gakpo. As a society, we love a scapegoat. Someone to pin all of our issues and blame on to make ourselves and others feel better.

I feel like we’re running into this with Gakpo currently. Don’t get me wrong, he is absolutely dreadful and shouldn’t be starting games for us currently, but he isn’t the only one.

It doesn’t help that he turned into prime Maldini to stop Curtis Jones on the line, but sharing the blame is also important.

Salah, although he scored, was totally ineffective outside of that goal. For a player of his calibre to miss a 5-yard square ball to Dom on a 4 v 2 counter is borderline unforgivable.

Gravenberch got the run around tonight, and not for the first time, might I add. Elliot Anderson pocketed him against Forest, Gomes tonight. We can’t allow that to continue if we actually want Champions League football next year.

Macca was showing signs in the first half of getting into a groove early, but didn’t even bother coming out after half-time.

The point I’m trying to make is that yes, Cody Gakpo should be dropped, but we’re in a moment right now where any of our players, when they get into the opposition half, can go completely missing, and we haven’t had that for a while.

Players have the odd bad game here and there, which is just football. Some of the weekly and monthly performances I’m seeing from these lads are extremely worrying, and Gakpo might just be the tip of a wondrously awful iceberg.