Saturday was a right kick in the proverbials for Liverpool. But they can’t afford to mope about it now – they need a reaction.
I was watching the game on television and early in the second half I could smell what was coming. It stank. I turned to the person I was watching with and said “we could lose this”. So it proved.
You have to give Nottingham Forest credit. They defended absolutely brilliantly and did a great job at shutting down Liverpool, and we only managed a few good chances. Once Forest went ahead, I couldn’t see where the inspiration was coming from for us. I wondered what I was watching at times.
Luis Diaz seemed the only player who could have given us a spark. He wasn’t at his best but he looked the most likely until he went off, whereas Mohamed Salah had what was surely one of his worst games ever for the club.
Liverpool had made a good start to the season and had played some decent stuff – not great, but decent. But we were all still scratching our heads trying to explain what happened against Forest when simple passes seemed beyond the players at times. Even Arne Slot probably didn’t know.
We just were nowhere near good enough. When one player doesn’t do well you can carry that, and two players sometimes. But when 60% aren’t at their level, then you are going to struggle. Forest, by contrast, were all eight out of 10 and did a good job at nullifying Alexis Mac Allister.
You’d like to think it was a one-off. Ryan Gravenberch played well and Alisson and some of the defenders did okay, but at times there was not enough urgency.
I don’t care what anyone says, the international break didn’t help. We were in a great moment, and when that happens you want to keep playing and maintain the momentum. But having people go all over the world, that disrupts things. You could see that against Forest. It wasn’t the biggest issue in the game, but it didn’t help.
Slot hasn’t done much rotation so far but that is now going to change. It’s not as if the rest of the squad shouldn’t be considered. They are all really good players. And to be fair, I agreed with his decision to keep that same team against Forest – you don’t want to change a winning team if you don’t have to.
The Forest defeat has already put us under massive pressure in terms of winning the league. Manchester City aren’t going to lose those kind of games.
When you don’t play well you grind out results like Arsenal have already done at Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur. We didn’t do that.
Want an example of how times have changed? Back when I was playing for Liverpool, after we’d lost a game we’d come straight back in the next day, have a bath and a massage and then go out on the ale, have some pizza or maybe a Maccies, play some darts and have it out between ourselves about what went wrong. That always got a reaction.
Of course, Liverpool’s players won’t have done all that. But what that they do need to show is a response to the Forest result. This is now a big week.
