Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has named the four players he thought were somewhat competent against Manchester City today.
Speaking in his post-match press conference after being thrashed 4-1 at the Etihad, the German identified the few players who were passable, slamming the rest of the team for their lack of positive contributions.
“We were not there anymore; we were completely open, we were too passive, too deep, too far away from everything,” said Klopp.
“If you look at the game, I think we had around about four performances which were OK: the two midfielders with Hendo and Fab worked a lot, tried to close gaps, Cody especially in possession and Ali, of course, and then that’s obviously very difficult.
“If you want to get something from here, then you have to play 11 players, 14, 15 players have to be on the top of their game and that was not the case again.
“So after being 3-1 down, it is anyway difficult to come back here. I think we had a situation for a 3-2 maybe when Robbo broke through on the left side, but then apart from that City could pretty much do what they wanted because the spaces were too big, and so we are rather lucky that they only scored one more. That’s it now.”
Klopp says only four Liverpool players were ‘okay’
Cody Gakpo and Alisson Becker were certainly a step above Liverpool’s worst today.
However, there is absolutely no chance Jordan Henderson and Fabinho were better than the likes of Mohamed Salah and Diogo Jota.
The Reds were completely opened up in the middle of the park, and that was largely due to the two senior players failing to win the ball.
At times, both midfielders were spotted out of position; and they made little attempt to get back to where they needed to be.
Even when they were trying to win possession back, they were too slow and clumsy to get anywhere near City’s players.
Henderson and Fabinho weren’t necessarily the worst two in the XI, but the fact Klopp pointed them out over others shows how ridiculous his bias is towards the pair.
If Liverpool are to get back to where they need to be, the manager needs to ditch this favouritism and completely overhaul his midfield this summer.