History repeats as Liverpool suffer SECOND blow | OneFootball

Two significant blows in two years. History has repeated itself at Liverpool and not for the better.

Liverpool made an error last season as they sent two young players to work under Pep Lijnders at Red Bull Salzburg. It was an absolute disaster.

Lijnders struggled badly with the Austrian side, losing consistently and falling well off the pace in the Austrian Bundesliga. The former Liverpool coach was sacked before New Year as they tried to save things.

But that left two young Reds stranded. The first, Bobby Clark, had been sold to Salzburg with a buyback clause. Liverpool were hoping he'd develop into a top player there and, potentially, someone they'd like to buy back.

The other was Stefan Bajcetic, who was supposed to recover after an injury-hit season with some top-level competitive football. Instead, he was out the door at Salzburg in January as Liverpool rushed to find a new loan spell.

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Fast-forward to this summer and Clark left Salzburg for Derby County on loan, while Bajcetic faces a very uncertain future. Though, he is now a part of Liverpool's squad.

It was a massive error to back Lijnders, essentially. Liverpool sent highly-rated young players to an unproven manager and paid the price.

And now they've done it again.

The Ajax problem

Johnny Heitinga left Liverpool this summer to join Ajax as their head coach. It was a blow to the Reds as the Dutchman proved himself to be a fantastic coach under Arne Slot last season.

Still, everyone understood why he wanted that job. It's not going well, however.

Ajax are third in the Eredivisie, with four wins and three draws. Their UEFA Champions League campaign is going poorly with a 2-0 home defeat to Inter followed by a 4-0 thrashing at Marseille.

Now, the latter was an incredibly harsh scoreline and Ajax didn't play that poorly. Still, they're struggling to find any consistency - and that's a problem.

Liverpool have sent two young players off to Ajax in goalkeeper Viteszlav Jaros and midfielder James McConnell. The latter, in particular, is paying a price for the team's inconsistency with just 24 minutes in the league this season.

It's still relatively early days and things might turn around but history does appear to be repeating itself here. Ajax are yet to find their feet and it leaves two young Liverpool stars a little bit stranded.

McConnell will hope everything turns around soon or he's going to end up in a very similar position to Clark. Fingers crossed Heitinga finds an answer because this doesn't look good for Liverpool.