Former Reds midfielder Jason McAteer couldn’t believe Liverpool conceded the winner in the dying minutes against Leeds on Saturday, as per beIN Sports.
The Merseyside outfit went 1-0 down after just four-minutes of play as Jurgen Klopp’s back-line made a silly mistake to start their game off.
Mohamed Salah redeemed his teammates with a leveller ten minutes later, with hope of three points re-emerging amongst the Anfield crowd.
However, in the dying moments of the 89th minute, Crysencio Summerville connected with Wilfried Gnonto’s cross, guiding the ball past Alisson Becker for the winning goal.
McAteer was fuming with the Liverpool defence, having asserted conceding goals at the end of games is something ‘top teams don’t do’. As broadcasted by beIN Sports, the former player exclaimed: “I’m not sitting here trying to make excuses for the team because I thought last night was a really, really poor performance by Liverpool.
“I think it’s shocking to dominate the second-half like that and not go on and win the game or even take a point from it.
“To concede in the last minute, top teams don’t do that. Lapses of concentration [and] individual errors are costing Liverpool. We can argue about changes of formation, we can argue about the transfer policy. For me, the team’s evolved.”
Liverpool fail to capitalise, again
As McAteer asserted, Liverpool should not be losing out on points in the final few minutes of play. If anything, this is often where the best teams pick up unjust wins, as scraping results is a big part of top-flight success.
Equally as worrying, they cannot be conceding right after the first whistle has been blown. Regardless of what they do for the remaining 80 minutes, if Klopp’s side concede at the beginning and at the end of each game, they will be lucky to finish in the top half of the table.
Whilst no fixture in the Premier League is easy nor a guaranteed win, the likes of Leeds and Nottingham Forest should have been two games the Reds came away from with an extra six points.
Coming off a 3-2 loss to league-leaders Arsenal, Liverpool bounced back with a shock win against Manchester City. Just three days later, Darwin Nunez gifted the side back-to-back wins with an early goal against West Ham.
However, with subsequent losses to Forest and Leeds, the Merseysiders have completely undone all of their own hard-work.
The opportunity to make ground on the top-four was there for the taking. But, as standard in recent times, the Reds shot themselves in the foot at the very moment they were meant to bound on.
This was even made all the more surprising as a comfortable 3-0 win over Ajax came between the two Premier League games.
With Tottenham and Napoli up next, Jurgen Klopp’s men are in for a tough week of fixtures. Having lost to Leeds, you would assume there is little hope to pick up two wins in two this week. However, with Liverpool’s recent results, anything could happen.
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