Brighton vs. Liverpool: *Bumper* Post-Match Analysis

Paul Tomkins, Andrew Beasley, Daniel Rhodes and other TTT regulars will give their thoughts on the match for 24 hours after the game, so the article received via email is unlikely to be the final version. There's statistics from the match and videos too.

Post-Match Thoughts

Paul Tomkins

Slow start? Check.

Sloppy passing or total gaffe to concede first goal? Check.

No midfielders who can run? Check.

Poor pressing that's easily played around? Check.

Team of old men? Check.

Confidence shot? Check.

Injuries making life harder? Check.

Alisson no longer making result-altering saves? Check.

Now we can add Liverpool playing like a bad Louis van Gaal or Jose Mourinho team (only without the bite) and constantly being made to look like playing football that's out of date, when Jürgen Klopp was the absolute master of the new brand of football.

The team has got old, the midfield is a mess, and yet the same selections are producing the same results.

It's now slow Dutch passing football, in the worst sense, when for years it felt more like the way Barcelona used to mix the Ajax style with the hard pressing that Klopp's teams were famous for. Liverpool now feel like van Gaal's United, passing and going nowhere.

And now the opposition constantly look like a revolutionary Jürgen Klopp side, and Liverpool look like a passive, ageing mess of a team who can't even string a few passes together (as no one runs off the ball), and as Mo Salah continues to look slow on the wing, but is kept there, even when anonymous, to the detriment of the team. The league has filled up with clever new managers, and Liverpool have lost their identity.

Salah's best form this season was as a centre-forward, where he has just enough pace left for a straight run at goal – as seen against Man City (and scored a hat-trick at Rangers as a late centre-forward sub), but Cody Gakpo was played there today; and when Ben Doak came on, it seemed like yet another concession to playing Salah on the right wing, where he's no longer the same force. Great talent, fading influence, and getting older.

The good news is that change simply has to come to this team. The problem is how long it will take.

Darwin Núñez has provided the pace and power that, today, only Ibrahima Konaté, the only Red to come out of the game with any credit, could offer.

That makes two players who can run fast and cover some ground, albeit Núñez joined the injury list, naturally.

Luis Díaz will be needed, as will Diogo Jota – players who can run, and who are not 29, 30 or even older. People criticising Núñez can see how awful the Reds were without his energy and pace.

Cody Gakpo will need more help than this, and I still don't see why he couldn't have played his preferred role on the left, with Salah through the middle; or why Doak was asked to play, for the first time I've ever seen having watched him so many times, on a flank unfamiliar to him. Or why Gakpo was played "out of position" in his second game for the club.

It just felt like overcomplicating things. Gakpo could do a different role (he’s done it a few times, even if it’s not his preferred role), and I'm sure Doak could do a different role. Players are versatile, and that's good. No one has to play in only one position.

But so early on in their Liverpool careers, in a dysfunctional team, together? Why not change to Gakpo left, Salah central and Doak right? Could that not have been the starting forward line, with Oxlade-Chamberlain and maybe Naby Keïta in midfield? Oxlade-Chamberlain isn’t really a left winger either. Neither has a future at the club, but someone who can run in midfield would make sense.

It seems like a total loss of clarity from the bench. Doak, such a brilliant dribbler and a force of nature on the right, didn't seem to know what to do. Why not let him play his natural game?

The quadruple sub was a nice sign of rectifying the mess, but even that took about seven minutes to actually get organised, by which point the game had gone. Changes could have been made at half-time, when a beating was clearly on the cards. Yet again it took just moments to see the scoreline change after the whistle – the team often starts second halves so badly, and this season, has started first halves badly too.

Virgil van Dijk and Roberto Firmino, as 31-year-olds, can offer something; but again, not as effectively in a team of old men. (Van Dijk remains vital in the air, and is one of the older players to still build around.)

But Joel Matip looks spent. They can all benefit from younger players around them, but not in a slow, ageing team containing Thiago, Fabinho and Jordan Henderson, while Salah, another in his 30s, looking increasingly ineffectual on the wing. The pressing is a mess; there's no energy.

This was about as bad as any display I've seen from a Klopp Liverpool team, reminiscent of a couple of horror shows at Watford that also ended 3-0. However, it comes on the back of several other horror displays, unlike the slip-ups of the past.

And Watford was where Bill Shankly realised, in 1970, he had to rebuild his team. I feel that Klopp knows he has to do the same, but even with his hands tied at times this season, he didn't pick Konaté in preseason, and he didn't pick Stefan Bajcetic prior to today, when he clearly needed someone who can run. Liverpool's sprinting and hard-running stats have fallen from continually up at the top, right down towards the bottom, in the space of six months. Give the passers some help by having some runners.

I don’t think Klopp is making a statement to FSG, because he’s just making his own life harder in the short term. He's not stupid, even if he might be too close to analyse what's going wrong right now. Maybe I'm too emotional right now, and more ranty than usual, but that was utter garbage today. It was atrocious, and part of a pattern, where teams just run through Liverpool at will.

Klopp won't help his own wish to get Jude Bellingham in the summer if he picks losing teams right now, and the Reds don't scrape the top four (and which I still wouldn't write off, after 2021 and early 2022, but where things feel more dysfunctional across the club right now). So I don’t think that sending a message to the owners is the issue.

Some of that buck stops with Klopp and Pep Lijnders after the transfer mess of the summer, that led to resignations across the club because the unity was gone (in addition to repeated long contracts to players in their 30s). And it's their job to get the team being less awful than this. (In 2020/21 they solved the issue by playing two giant rookie centre-backs when, to me, a major issue had been a lack of giant centre-backs. Last season they turned it around too.)

They're relying on experience and there aren’t many fit alternatives. Everyone knows the team needs new midfielders, as well as needing the injury crisis to heal.

But why keep picking the same midfield that can't run?

Why ask Thiago to press so high, just so that a clever team can bypass the press, and he stands no chance of getting back in the game? So many Liverpool midfielders remain adrift, lost ahead of the ball, that it's like playing with eight at times; have players who can get up and back all game and it can feel like playing with 14. That's how it used to be.

I agree with Klopp that last season took too much out of everyone, but can't the coaching staff work out a way that the opposition can't just make runs right through the middle of the Reds' team at will, week after week? What is Fabinho there for?

Can a defensive midfielder not just focus on defending when the team is so open? Can't the formation be switched, if not? What's happening on the training ground? I've been full of praise for Lijnders in recent years, but what the hell is he doing with his tactical work? Where's the flexibility? Why have the younger players not been integrated more intelligently, such as in the Wolves cup tie? The team is crying out for fresh young legs.

Klopp and Lijnders have earned the time to turn things around. They're elite. But they need to stop this rot, and they need to work with the transfer people to find solutions. But a chunk of the squad needs cutting off, ASAP, with a midfield overhaul now necessary. They need to prove that they’re not the ones ageing out.

(EDIT: I said earlier in the season that Klopp has achieved absolutely everything in football, from winning a title and defending a league title with an underdog in Germany, to winning the Champions League and the Premier League title, and various other incredible achievements and trophies – but he’s yet to rebuild one of his own ageing sides. Dortmund were so young that he never had to; and when they did lose players, it was often to a richer rival who lured them away. It may be one of the hardest things to do on an emotional level, and it could be something that managers struggle to see as they’re too close to view the bigger picture; albeit I also repeat that Klopp surely knows the team is too old, but he’s still talking about keeping order players like Roberto Firmino, and people talk as if the Reds should still have Sadio Mané and Gini Wijnaldum, both in their 30s too. To me, preferring Matip over Konaté in preseason was the first worrying sign of maybe not seeing the need for pace, power and a more youthful team.)

Naby Keïta has to go. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain has to go. Arthur will surely go, before he's ever really arrived. Jordan Henderson, at best, has to become the new James Milner (last choice utility player and off-field leader), and Milner has to go (or become a coach).

And as I've been saying for months, I'd sell Fabinho too, ASAP, as the one saleable midfield asset, and someone whose legs look gone. He has had a frankly abysmal season, and as the refs allow much more physicality, is too easily bullied.

In that sense, the future can be a lot brighter, as we won't have to watch an old, stodgy team for too much longer. It's just not viable, for anyone.

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