Van Dijk is wrong over biggest problem Liverpool ‘have to address again apparently’ in ‘debrief’ | OneFootball

It is as good an unbeaten streak as West Ham, Sunderland and Stoke have managed in their Premier League histories, and longer than anything Brighton, Fulham, Southampton and Bolton have ever mustered in the top flight.

Only Arsenal can beat it this season, and if Liverpool avoid defeat against beleaguered Bournemouth and Newcastle at Anfield, they would surpass that too.

But a comparison between those two runs need only be brief to underline the difference: Arsenal’s 11 consecutive games without a loss brought 27 points; Liverpool’s 10 straight matches avoiding defeat have delivered 18 points thus far.

Four wins – all unconvincing, against teams 12th or lower, two of which are in the relegation zone – and six draws mean Liverpool are only slightly better off than when this period of flimsy invincibility began in earnest.

That came after those consecutive 3-0 reverses against Manchester City and Nottingham Forest, when the mini-crisis had become full-blown and Arne Slot’s future came into question. They were two points off fourth, the same cushion they now enjoy to those chasing a Champions League place.

It brings to mind a Jose Mourinho sequence in his first season at Old Trafford, when Manchester United went 25 Premier League games unbeaten to go from 8th to 5th – or perhaps more pertinently, eight points off first to 16 behind.

Not that Mourinho was perturbed by the doubling of that deficit to the summit. As he had it, “it’s a good feeling to know we don’t lose many matches”.

Slot has thankfully not indulged in such absurd maths and pseudophilosophy. Even backed with a title winner’s medal he knows that is not a battle he would win, especially after Liverpool became the first reigning Premier League champions ever to fail to beat any of the newly promoted sides at home in a season.

Those draws having led against Burnley and Leeds, and even Fulham at Craven Cottage, thoroughly undermine any sense of momentum being built, of that “mentality of resilience” Mourinho felt his players had built.

This absolutely isn’t that. Liverpool felt anxious, nervous, painfully aware of how slender their lead was. They often do and it only worsens the longer the game goes on.

“After 60 minutes, we started to become sloppy and it’s not the first time,” Virgil van Dijk said, adding, with the air of an embattled parent who is not angry, just disappointed: “It’s been spoken about already but we have to address it again apparently.”

That “debrief” might already have taken place. But when the number of decent Liverpool performances this season can be counted on one hand with change, their expensive composite parts continue to resemble a jumble and a dozen games unbeaten in all competitions has left supporters perhaps even more frustrated then before, it’s worth wondering whether “sloppiness” or Slot is their biggest problem.