The REAL reason behind Liverpool's enormous drop-off | OneFootball

Liverpool drop-off has been well documented this season. At first it was down the the new signings, but recently it's become more about Arne Slot's tactics and the player's efforts.

Four consecutive Premier League losses has only happened three other times to defending champions, namely Liverpool in 2021, Chelsea in 2017 and Leicester City in 2016. We all know that retaining the title is such a difficult feat to achieve, but the Reds' efforts so far have been dismal.

In his press conferences, Slot is keen to put some of the form down to how the other teams are setting up against us this season, namely calling out the reliance on set-pieces and use of long-balls and long-throws, to make sure the ball is in play for as little time as possible. To adjust for that, Slot has tried to make different tactical changes, but nothing has been able to make a difference yet.

After the most recent loss against Brentford on Saturday night, however, vice-captain Andy Robertson was especially critical of the team and his teammates' efforts throughout the game.

Robertson calls out lack of structure

Speaking to LFCTV after the game, with quotes via Liverpool ECHO, the Scot said: "You have to fight for the control [of the game]. No team in the Premier League, nobody's going to go, 'On you go, you take the ball, we'll try and defend.' Nobody does that.

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"They [the opposition] always have a gameplay, against us and every team. All the managers in the Premier League are so talented, especially the teams that have got a full week to prepare. They would have had a clear gameplay and I think they played theirs perfectly.

"We didn't play ours at all. That makes it so difficult. If you just think you're going to show and all of a sudden they're going to drop off, we're going to have control and we'll just wait until we score. It never, ever happens. This is my ninth season, I think maybe it's only happened once or twice. If we expect that, then we're in big trouble."

The closest Liverpool have gotten to playing a deep-block was against Burnley, who muscled just 0.13xg from three shots, compared to the Reds' 2.65xg from 27 shots in their contest in September.

Regardless of the opposition, there needs to be an element of hunger in the players to respond to what they're doing and put the pressure on. Playing a team off the park isn't always straightforward because they'll have tactics to thwart our efforts, but the desire to win the ball needs to be there.

Quite troubling is the fact that Brentford wanted it more than Liverpool did. As Robertson said in his quotes, the Bees' game plan worked to perfection, while the Reds barely had a chance to get settled.

Liverpool have conceded the first goal in each of their last six matches, and it should go a miss that five of those contests were away from home, so it's hardly been easy to get back into the game once you've allowed the opposition to get on top of you early on. You're constantly facing an uphill battle.

But what's worse is that Arne Slot's tactical approach might well have evolved over the last month, and we've barely had a chance to see the team play in his new system, because everything has to revolve around the state of the game. Once you're chasing, you've got to respond - and the closer you get to full-time, staring down the barrel of a defeat, the approach becomes attack-focused.

Most Liverpool fans will feel as though they've seen the same game of football over and over in recent weeks, and Robertson has proved that players are aware of it. Against Brentford, conceding a long-throw was the mistake and within three touches, we'd been carved open from the set-piece.

In the United game, it was failing to remain focused after the referee chose against stopping the game for Alexis Mac Allister's head injury. Before that, it was not closing down Moises Caicedo before he got a shot off at goal in the Chelsea game; Crystal Palace only needed a corner kick.

Errors happen, they're part and parcel of the game. But the frequency of Liverpool's mistakes problematic. Slot can't be held responsible for that. The players need to be taking accountability.