Jurgen Klopp has admitted his frustration at the way Liverpool failed to support Andy Robertson in attack last night.
The Reds left-back was one of the few bright spots in an otherwise turgid evening for Liverpool. A 2-1 defeat against Leeds United and their proud home record left in tatters.
And speaking in his post-match press conference via liverpoolfc.com, Klopp said that Liverpool didn’t give Robertson enough help.
“In moments it is absolutely difficult [to control the game], you can see that. The boys really want, so that means we speed up. An example is Robbo: Robbo is outside, bam, goes inside but [has] no option to play, really,” said the manager.
“Then you lose the ball twice in a challenge and then it is a counter-attack in the other direction. How often do we have these situations where Robbo is doing exactly that and has different options, can pass the ball wide or inside and all these kinds of things? In the moments, I am not sure if there was anybody.”
Liverpool fail to find their rhythm once more
Klopp is right to bring Robertson up as an example of Liverpool actually attacking last night.
Throughout the first-half especially, the Scotland captain looked like the Reds main threat. The goal came from his ball into the box and he almost created a second with an excellent run and deflected cross that sailed just wide.
But on every other occasion, Liverpool didn’t give him a chance to create anything. There was a distinct lack of movement and Leeds players were able to quickly smother him.
As Klopp points out, this meant that Liverpool were giving the ball away far too often. They gave Leeds too much encouragement that they could get at them.
When you give a team that must invitation over the course of 90 minutes, you can’t be surprised that they keep going right to the end.
That’s exactly what Leeds did, and they got their reward for it.
This isn’t something new for Liverpool at this point. They have failed game after game to get any kind of rhythm going. Attacks are sporadic and seemingly at random. Few players appear to know what’s expected of them, with their roles changing from week to week.
We thought that the second half of the 2020/21 season was bad, but this is actually worse. At least Liverpool had the mitigating circumstances of having no fit senior centre-backs then. Now, it’s really difficult to see how things get better.
Receive a digest of our best Liverpool content each week direct to your mailbox
