*Bumper* Post-Match Analysis: Liverpool 3-3 Brighton

A good point then a bad point

Paul Tomkins, Andrew Beasley, Daniel Rhodes and other TTT regulars will give their thoughts on the match for 24 hours after the game, and there's post-match statistics and videos too.

Post-Match Thoughts

Paul Tomkins

It's hard to win football matches if you don't field a right-side of the team.

Trent Alexander-Arnold did his best to play himself out of the World Cup (which may do him some longer-term good) with a total horror show, where he was slow to close down on two of the goals and gave away the ball for the other. It's not that he wasn't trying, but his head wasn't right – and on the issue of the right, there was no right-sided midfield either, it seemed.

Up front on the right, Mo Salah appears to have lost half a yard of pace, and it's the important half a yard. Maybe it’s temporary, but he’s going to lose his explosiveness at his age; and the opposition also seem to have faster full-backs these days, too.

Still, the left side wasn't much better with Kostas Tsimikas playing like he's been on the Ouzo all week, albeit at least that flank improved after the break.

There was no cohesion to the display, just a bit of energy when Luis Diaz and Harvey Elliott came on with younger legs, before Diogo Jota joined them.

The Reds started with three slow, ageing midfielders, in front of two ageing centre-backs, and with two ageing strikers, and yet again, it hasn't worked overall.

I defended keeping many of these older players in the squad this past summer, but in the team? It feels far too old.

Each can make a case to play as an individual, as Roberto Firmino did so well with two goals; but right now, together it's a mess. It's like watching a team slowly dying, hastened by the exhaustion of 2021/22, and shorn of the younger legs that include Ibrahima Konaté and today, a couple of others.

That said, the lineup was clearly forced by international commitments, and you can't go into 13 games in six-or-so weeks with the guys just flogged for their countries on the other side of the world. The players do need protecting.

But Liverpool are starting games so slowly and so badly that they don't deserve anything. A lack of intensity at the start suggests older players, trying to conserve energy; no young bucks, tearing into the opposition.

The energetic, intense identity has been replaced by a slow, plodding XI full of 30-somethings, with no balancing of age and brio, beyond one player at a time (this time, Fabio Carvalho); plus a right-back who is neither defending well nor, given the confidence crisis, attacking well.

It was a mediocre team display for 60 minutes, after a quite appalling start. The stats that will follow will sum up just how bad it was, defensively at least.

The second half of my comments and those of the others follow for subscribers only.