Liverpool’s inconsistency a product of painful yet predictable transition

The Reds displayed more inconsistency after going down 3-2 at Arsenal to sit 14 points off top spot

Having struggled to find a solution for Liverpool’s problems, Jurgen Klopp at least found the words to describe their situation.

“What you build with your hands, you knock down with your backside,” the manager said. “That is not helpful.”

That is saying something. It’s also another way of saying one step forward, one step back – except with the latter being fairly hapless stumbles and falls right now. It isn’t that Liverpool are dropping points in the way an off-form team do. It is that they are so often collapsing in on themselves.

That in itself warrants standing back, mind. The first thing that should be said about Liverpool’s erratic season is that some of it is actually predictable. Klopp has basically been pushing the side to the outer limits of performance for half a decade in order to keep up with Manchester City, and that is inevitably going to lead to a drop-off.

It is a fatigue issue compounded by the fact that team cycles generally only have three or four years before going stale, and the manager has to take action. This was always the Sir Alex Ferguson maxim. The Manchester United great would so often rip up the team and go again in one summer. Klopp has actually been trying to replicate this for at least a year. Even Thiago Alcantara was an indication of this.

It’s just that, without City’s ability to spend, Liverpool aren’t really in the position to make all of the significant changes necessary over one summer. That is going to bring transition, and what does transition look like?

Well, a lot like this, at least in terms of results. It’s inconsistency and intermittent displays. It’s problems. It’s flaws.

That, however, is also where it gets deeper – and where the questions really arise. Klopp is still trying to figure out a host of these problems. He’s also in the unenviable position right now where almost every attempt at a fix causes an issue elsewhere. That’s what happens when a team that had worked so perfectly starts to break down. It’s very difficult to retrofit.

Klopp has admittedly had to deal with a lot of other problems to go with that all at once, and some of them unexpected. There was, first of all, the very passage of time, and growing indications that oppositions had worked out how to inhibit Liverpool’s wing-backs. They had been the engines of the team, fuelling that forward line.

That forward line had finally been properly broken up with the departure of Sadio Mane, requiring a reshaping – as well as a significant psychological readjustment – but that has coincided with the engine spluttering. Liverpool do not just have to adapt to Darwin Nunez, a totally different profile of player to Mane. They have Trent Alexander-Arnold off form, and possibly enduring the inevitable inhibitions that come from so much scrutiny. They have Virgil van Dijk unable to pin the defence together in the way he used to. They have Fabinho suffering the most sudden and surprising drop of all, and not just not looking like himself in a manner no one expected.

That has left Liverpool even more short in midfield, to go with other injuries, which has necessitated even more changes than Klopp would like.

It has most of all meant there have really been only two major midfielders he wants to play. That has resulted in this 4-2-4, which inevitably worked a lot better against Rangers than it did against Arsenal. Once you play anything resembling a top side, though, it brings far more complications than Klopp’s staff could have imagined.

Bukayo Saka celebrates scoring the second Arsenal goal on Sunday (Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

Most gallingly, the midfield lose the ability to press as well as to impose themselves in any way. That could be seen in how Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka simply strolled through the centre of the pitch after just 58 seconds to set up that opening goal. It could be felt in how often Arsenal were willing to leave Jordan Henderson on the ball in the centre. The captain has many qualities but dictating a game with his passing isn’t among his best. There was one moment against Arsenal when he just shanked the ball out of play. There was another when he passed it all the way back when Thiago would surely have looked for something more perceptive.

There’s then the most conspicuous issue out of all: the complete isolation of Mohamed Salah. Given the Egyptian has for four years been one of the most dangerous players in world football from his ability to cut inside, it makes his positioning all the more baffling. He was left looking like a winger from the 1950s, hugging the touchline, rather than a player being held up as a potential 2021 Ballon D’Or winner.

Even if it hasn’t worked, though, there is at least some logic to this role. It has been suggested that Salah has been placed out there to solve the problem of opposition sides rumbling Liverpool’s full-backs, so this theoretically releases Alexander-Arnold. It has instead had the opposite effect, although multiplied. Salah may be positioned like a traditional winger but he doesn’t play like one and just doesn’t do that kind of defensive work. That has left Alexander-Arnold even more exposed, and put him in this bind between attack and defence much more often. With more defensive responsibilities, he can’t even be as effective going forward. It also means Salah is more isolated, his position actually mitigating against his abilities.

Jurgen Klopp is still trying to figure out a host of problems (PA)

The failure of this was signalled with the Egyptian taken off, and how many times Alexander-Arnold had been attacked before his own injury-enforced substitution.

Nor was it a surprise when Liverpool’s opening goal came from the right-back playing a ball over that midfield, and onto Luis Diaz.

There was still a sense of life any time the Colombian got the ball because his very energy makes things happen and brings connection. It clearly brought more out of Darwin Nunez, too, since the forward so benefitted from Diaz’s movement. That was one link that provides some light – but now we have concerns over the Colombian’s fitness. It would almost sum up Liverpool’s season, and cap it, if he were to suffer a long-term injury.

Because, without him, the team would look like an even more disconnected XI. It is as if different parts work to very different degrees of effectiveness. It is little wonder they are inconsistent.

It is much more of a wonder how Klopp gets out of this.

No one should doubt him in that regard, of course. This isn’t like what happened at Borussia Dortmund in 2014-15. He has more than shown he is capable of resetting Liverpool. You only have to look at the recovery from the winter of 2020-21. It just may involve a few more knockdowns yet.