Liverpool had 22 shots in total vs Newcastle United on Saturday but they could only manage to score from one of them. It was Mo Salah who found the back of the net in the 3rd minute of the game and everyone thought it would be smooth sailing from here onwards.
While Liverpool were the far better side on the pitch all throughout the match, the Magpies were still able to nick a point thanks to a 95th-minute equaliser.
And once again, Liverpool’s inability to finish off chances had been highlighted thanks to these two dropped points. This season, Liverpool’s forwards have been a shadow of their previous selves and when Jurgen Klopp was asked how he intends to solve this problem, the manager had a very simple solution.
The manager said after the match: “There is only one way[to solve the goalscoring problem]: to go again, to go again, to go again. In training you can believe me that we do often enough finishing when we have time to train – and we have now time to train, obviously, so it’s not about that.
“You can see it: in a positive face, in a really positive face, you miss chances but it is just that nobody talks about them. When you have a really good game, you have 25 shots and like 10 or 12 are on target, [but] most of the time only two or three of them are in and that means you miss a lot of chances in good games, in really good games.
“But you don’t care because you are in a positive moment and you just know, ‘OK, good information, that’s how we do it, that’s how we should do it again and then we can score…’
“In our situation obviously still, which is tough to accept but we see it, we score with the first, don’t score with the second, don’t score with the third, don’t score with the fourth and stuff like this and then obviously the confidence drops and you can see that.
Allan Saint-Maximin responded to a Liverpool fan who asked to swap him for Sadio Mané. Touch of class from @asaintmaximin 🤝🤝 pic.twitter.com/6SIXC28HO4
— SPORTbible (@sportbible) April 25, 2021
“That’s not OK, but it happened and that’s why these situations are different, but the only way you can do it is you have to create, you have to create chances and you have to bring yourself into positions from where you can score. That’s what we will do.”
The only reason why the Liverpool boss chose to give such a simple answer is that he does not have too much squad depth to be able to experiment in the forward areas.
Over the past couple of seasons, players like Salah, Firmino and Mane have been doing the job perfectly for their manager. But all of a sudden, all three are out of form at the same time so Klopp has no clue how to solve this problem.
Jota has been putting in fine shifts whenever called upon but the summer signing alone cannot change the fate of the club.
Mo Salah has still scored 20 Premier League goals this season but Sadio Mane has managed only eight goals in his 30 league appearances. Firmino, who is the main centre-forward at the club has scored only six league goals in 31 games this season.
And to be brutally honest, these poor goal-scoring ratios guarantee nothing but a mid-table finish for Liverpool.
