Should We Be Worried About Liverpool’s Defensive Lapses So Far This Season? | OneFootball

We are only two games into the 2025-2026 season, so in some ways it is silly to try to draw any kind of conclusions about anything really. As things stand, Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur are the three times with six points from six.

You can imagine two of those teams being in the title conversation at the end of the season, but even the most myopic of Spurs supporter might struggle to justify any idea that they will be. Even so, the Reds have conceded four goals across two games, with the types of goal being different enough to mean that concern at this stage is valid.

Aerially Weak

Whilst Bournemouth didn’t really cause us any problems from set-pieces, the games against Crystal Palace in the Community Shield and Newcastle United last night pitted the Reds against sides that weren’t afraid of going long. There is an argument, in fact, that the Saudi Arabian-owned Magpies were more set-pieces FC than Arsenal. Dan Burn has caused Liverpool trouble in the past, whilst Bruno Guimarães’s equaliser came straight from the training ground of a team that knows what it takes to play ugly. Sadly, Milos Kerkez simply wasn’t strong enough in the challenge.

Palace, meanwhile, knew that long throws and set-pieces were always likely to cause us trouble, largely because of the fact that Ibrahima Konaté’s head seems to be in Madrid even whilst his body is on Merseyside. The bad news for Arne Slot is that the majority of teams in the Premier League now know that long balls into the box from the likes of corners and free-kicks will have our defence running around like headless chickens. The vast majority of teams in the top-flight know exactly how to do that and we don’t seem to have any convincing answer to the questions we’ll be asked.

Defensive Naivety

Werner100359, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In the wake of Liverpool’s 4-2 win over Bournemouth, Jamie Carragher spoke to the manager and asked him if he was displeased with the way that the Reds overloaded the opposition final third at 2-1 up, prior to being hit on the counter. Slot’s answer, in short, was ‘no’. Obviously, it is entirely possible that the Dutchman will be saying one thing in public and an entirely different thing in private, but it is difficult to escape the feeling that he doesn’t mind us being far more on the side of ‘risk’ than of ‘reward’. Against Newcastle, we did the same thing, overloading and leaving ourselves light at the back.

In the Premier League, you are going to get punished if you behave naively in a defensive manner. Right now, every club in the division will be looking at the Reds and licking its lips at the prospect of the spaces that we keep leaving, on top of how weak we are aerially. Titles are built on the back of defences, yet we have already conceded just shy of a tenth of the goals that we let in last season. If we continue in the same vein, it is difficult to see how we manage to win back-to-back top-flight titles for the first time since the mid-1980s. Slot is obviously a brilliant manager, but he needs to sort out this aspect of the team.

Still Learning How to Play With Each Other

If we were to be generous to Liverpool, you could point to the fact that half of the defence is brand new to the club. Last night, Dominik Szoboszlai was having to play at right-back in spite of the fact that he is a midfielder. Milos Kerkez is learning that the level at a club like ours is very different from what he came to expect during his time with the Cherries. The more that these players play alongside one another, the more likely it is that they will be able to put together more coherent displays. The problem is that these issues have been there all summer but have yet to be addressed.

Of course, defending is a team game and there is certainly an extent to which the midfield hasn’t yet found its feet and worked out what its role is in helping the defenders out enough to be able to stop us conceding goals at will. Florian Wirtz, for example, is an unbelievable talent, but isn’t helping out Ryan Gravenberch enough to mean that his place is a lock. Szoboszlai was great last night in an unfamiliar role, but was part of the reason why we were so easily cut open against Bournemouth. Again, the more that these players work together, the better we’ll get. It just needs to happen sooner rather than later.