Jamie Carragher has doubled down on his scathing criticism of Arne Slot’s Liverpool being like a basketball team’ this season after their third defeat in a week.
The crushing late winner for Chelsea on Saturday saw them beat the Reds 2-1 at Stamford Bridge to leave Arne Slot with plenty of problems to solve over the international break.
Carragher had spotted the flaws in Liverpool earlier in the season even after victory in their opener against Bournemouth, raising eyebrows at the time by asking Slot directly about how open his team looked.
After the defeat by Galatasaray in midweek, Carragher said: ‘Liverpool aren’t playing football at the moment, they are playing basketball. It is just end to end and I don’t think top teams play like that.’
And on his new Sky Sports show, Super Sunday Extra Time, the club legend doubled down, saying: ‘My criticism of Liverpool being almost like a basketball team, again it has come back to haunt them.
‘This thing about it being end to end in a game of football, Liverpool should be dominating a game like this with the changes of personnel Chelsea have got.’
Chelsea were down to the bare bones in defence and they suffered injuries to Benoit Badiashile and Josh Acheampong in the second half.
But Liverpool, despite creating chances of their own, allowed the Blues to play through them with regularity.
Carragher analysed the winner from Estevao, saying: ‘When the ball gets switched, the left winger for Liverpool is behind the full-back!
‘Andy Robertson is a really experienced player and I’m not sure he had enough in this situation as well.
‘It is far too easy to play through Liverpool and get at them. It is a tough place to go, Chelsea, but with the team Chelsea had out, that’s a game Liverpool should have won, particularly after going 1-1.’
Carragher had gone into further detail after Liverpool’s chastening defeat in Turkey, which followed another late goal loss at Crystal Palace in their previous encounter.
On punditry duty for CBS, he said: ‘I expressed that (fears over Liverpool’s play) to the manager early on, he’ll know that a lot better than me.
‘He is obviously a fantastic manager. But right now Liverpool went from, I would call them a top team, workmanlike team last season and they have sprinkled a little bit of star dust on it terms of the transfers that they have brought in. And they haven’t gained anything going forward but they have lost a lot defensively.
‘I think for the manager now, last season was such a smooth ride for them, he has got to really earn his money.
‘He did last season, won the Premier League, unbelievable. But there’s a few problems there that he has got to fix and it’ll be really interesting how he goes about it.’
But Slot was unable to fix the issue by Saturday and Liverpool lost their place in top spot to Arsenal after the manager lost three games in a row for the first time since taking charge at Anfield.
Even though Liverpool won their first seven games of the season, Carragher says this run of defeats was easy to see coming.
He added: ‘It’s not the losses, it is not the defeats. It is the performances and this has been coming from day one. Liverpool got battered by Newcastle in the second half of that game. Newcastle had 10 men. That can’t happen.
‘Palace created seven big chances, that’s more big chances than any team has conceded in the Premier League this season and Liverpool are the champions.
‘This has been coming, this is not a shock for me and the manager needs to fix it.’
Carragher then went on to praise Chelsea in what he believes is a win that could galvanise the club and fanbase behind Maresca.
He went on: ‘From Chelsea’s point of view it is a fantastic result for them, the biggest result for them under Enzo Maresca I would think in his tenure, certainly at Stamford Bridge. He won the Club World Cup of course but in terms of the togetherness and what it meant, I think it was an unbelievable victory for them.
‘That was a victory that does a lot for the manager. I love the manager’s celebration, I love the running down the touchline. He can’t come in front of the cameras afterwards, that’s ridiculous, you want to hear from him.
‘That will build a connection with the supporters. I said a lot last season with Enzo Maresca.
‘I think he’s a really good manager and coach and every time they come up against Liverpool they seem to have a plan to get the better of them but at times there wasn’t that connection with supporters and maybe that was waning in the last few weeks again. A win like that against the champions creates a really strong bond.’
