Liverpool are having a woeful run in the Premier League over the past few months and the Jurgen Klopp led side just cannot seem to win at home. The Reds have lost to teams like Brighton, Burnley and Fulham at Anfield and these poor results have now put their top-four hopes in serious jeopardy.
Liverpool are currently occupying the eighth spot on the league table – seven points behind the final Champions League spot and pundit Paul Merson seems to have put the blame on manager Jurgen Klopp for Liverpool’s shortcomings in recent weeks.
He wrote for Sky Sports: “This is hard to say but I think Jurgen Klopp has been a bit blinkered at Liverpool.
“It really is hard to say because he is a really top manager, but when you look at their situation, you’ve got Robertson and Alexander-Arnold, who are two of the best attacking full-backs in the country and they are up there as two of the best in the world too. There is no doubt about that. You only have to look at their assists and their crossing.
“But, at the moment, they haven’t got the personnel in defence to keep things tight. If Van Dijk and Gomez aren’t there, Liverpool’s centre-backs aren’t good enough. That screams at me that they needed to switch to a back three.
“That would give you bit more protection and it would just change things up a bit. However, he stuck with 4-3-3 time and time again, and they’ve been exposed.”
Liverpool beat RB Leipzig in the Champions League on Wednesday and in that match too Jurgen Klopp opted for the traditional 4-3-3 formation.
In fact, as per TransferMarkt, the Liverpool boss does not seem to use any other formation, no matter if the opponents are a powerhouse or a minnow. The last time Jurgen Klopp made a change in tactics was against West Ham United on the 31st of January when he opted for a 4-3-1-2.
Merson seems to have hit the nail in the head in terms of Klopp’s tactical rigidity but to be fair, the manager has had to deal with a plethora of injuries and maybe this has prevented the German from tinkering with the formation too much.
