What a difference a week makes. Just seven days ago, Liverpool was dreaming of a sensational treble, with the Premier League well on its way to Anfield, the hard part done against Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League, and a final at Wembley just around the corner.
It’s taken just over 200 minutes of action to completely change all that. Sure, the league title still looks as though it’s in the bag, but the last week has gone about as badly as it could have done for the Reds.
The defeat to PSG was heartbreaking, but it could have happened to anyone against one of Europe’s best sides. Much, much more worrying than that was Sunday’s performance at Wembley, when - let’s face it - a 2-1 defeat to Newcastle actually flattered Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final.
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The problem is, that display has felt like it’s been coming for a while now, and it can trace its roots all the way back to over a month ago, when the quadruple turned into the treble.
The defeat to Plymouth in the FA Cup was a shock, but a line should have been drawn under it quickly. Instead, you can trace much of what was bad about Liverpool at Wembley back to that fateful day in Devon.
Arne Slot was roundly criticized for playing a much weaker side then, with some even going as far as to label it his biggest mistake in his short reign at Liverpool so far. For what it’s worth, I actually disagree with that viewpoint, and if anything, Sunday showed exactly why he was right to rest some of his biggest names.
What is his biggest mistake though is that he hasn’t done that often enough. Players like Harvey Elliott, Federico Chiesa and Jarell Quansah have been starved of minutes this season, and even Curtis Jones has begun to fall out of favor in recent weeks.
For all the talk of an over-reliance on Mohamed Salah, Slot leans too heavily on the same 11 or 12 players. And when he did give his fringe players a chance, and they didn’t deliver, he seems to have doubled down on that stance.
The likes of Alexis Mac Allister and Ryan Gravenberch, such vital members of the team earlier in the season, now look like they’re running on fumes as a result. It can’t be any surprise that Dominik Szoboszlai, the one midfielder who has been rotated more regularly, has been the standout performer in the engine room recently.
That game at Plymouth seemed as though it was the end of the line for some players, especially Elliott and Chiesa. Ironically, they were perhaps the only players to escape Sunday’s final with any credit.
Yet, while those two have been made to sit idly by, Luis Diaz and Diogo Jota have somehow managed to retain their places in the starting lineup. They were just as bad as anyone else against Plymouth, yet have managed to retain their spots in the starting lineup for most of the games since, while contributing just one goal between them.
Jamie Carragher is right that Liverpool needs to sign a couple more attackers in the summer, but at the same time, Slot needs to show more faith in the other options he has currently at the club. At the very least, Chiesa must get more opportunities now after his cameo at Wembley.
Barring a catastrophic last couple of months, the Premier League title should be what ultimately defines Slot’s first season in charge. In the long run though, that game at Plymouth might actually prove to have more of an impact, providing the Liverpool boss learns properly from it.
