Lessons Learned: Everything Goes Wrong as Liverpool Crumble To Forest | OneFootball

Liverpool and Slot Must Heed Knowledge Gained From Awful Display

Sometimes reality can bite hard and that was the case here. Fortunately, there’s not too long until the Reds have a chance to redeem themselves, but there’s many that’ll be walking round in a Sunday malaise after that defeat on Saturday.

Arne Slot’s perfect start came to a crashing end, where if we started to unpick every single thing that was wrong, we’d still be going until next Wednesday. Liverpool were out-fought, out-scored and out-thought by Nottingham Forest in this one. We look at the lessons learned from a first league defeat of the season at Anfield.

Hopefully Not A Blueprint

There’s not enough evidence to say it is germ but the worry is for many Reds that Forest may have given a helping hand to other teams who visit Anfield this season. They packed the midfield, leaving Liverpool with no room and their tactic was clear. Attacking wise, they often went long and then picked up the second balls just by the sheer additional numbers they had in the middle of the park.

Liverpool couldn’t pass through them in their normal way and Forest decided they were going to push us wide. Aina and Moreno easily had the better of Salah and Diaz for most of the afternoon as we simply ran out of ideas. They then threw pace on for the break as they knew Liverpool would open up. Slot has to now prove he can overcome this as others will try it, no doubt.

Photo: IMAGO

Pass Marks Are Scarce

Maybe Van Dijk, Allison, Konate and Gravenberch who came in for undue criticism were worthy of pass marks. Other than that social media took it in turn to take shots at players then each other in this one. It’s pretty simple but true to say that the right side were all abysmal and if any of Trent, Salah and Szoboszlai had been substituted then they couldn’t have complained.

These are players with talent, but they struggled to even master the basics in this one and so much that was wrong revolved around them. That being said, Diaz couldn’t beat a man and it’s easy to wise after the event, but we looked tired from the off. In a game where most were stinking up the place, every sub pretty much made it worse too. A game to forget for most.

Worrying Slot Development

So far the new coach has been the personification of focus, calm and calculating. However, it felt that this game showed a few worrying traits we hadn’t come across yet. With every substitution we got worse and most of us in the stadium and at home were wondering what the formation or tactics were as the game went on.

A back three of Bradley, Van Dijk and Tsimikas with Trent pushed into midfield saw everyone look like a fish out of water and why bring on Tsimikas if he’s not going to be told to whip in balls to the box? Nunez, Jones and Gakpo offered nothing, but neither particularly did anyone else. We’ve been used to little tweaks and the right decisions as the game’s gone on previously. It did feel like he panicked a bit here. Let’s hope he learns quickly.