Reasons To Be Dreadful

Liverpool’s disastrous start to 2017 has left their supporters disappointed beyond belief and scratching their heads as to what has caused their team’s drastic downturn in fortunes in such a short period of time.

After beating Manchester City on the last day of 2016 Liverpool looked like serious title contenders, but since that win they are still looking for their next win in the league, and have since exited the Capital One Cup and the FA Cup and have dropped down to 5th position in the Premier League after Saturday’s 2-0 defeat away at Hull City.

I’ll try to put my take on some of the reasons I think have contributed to Liverpool’s recent poor form:

Injuries – Injuries to key players hasn’t helped Klopp’s team, injuries to Coutinho, Lallana and Matip have resulted in Klopp having to change his team more often than he wanted, and even on Saturday Lovren and Klavan were both unavailable to play in defence resulting in Lucas deputising in defence once again, a team selection that Klopp has had to make far too often this season.

Loss of form – Too many players have lost their form from the earlier part of the season, Can has been woeful, Coutinho and Lallana have struggled since returning from injury and Firmino has hardly kicked a ball since his run-in with the police on Christmas Eve.

Goalkeeper- Klopp dropped Mignolet for Karius earlier in the season but had to rei-instate the Belgian because the German stopper was so poor, but Mignolet is not the answer as we saw on Saturday when he gifted Hull their opening goal, and Klopp must sign a top class keeper.

Busy January- Liverpool had a lot of games to play in January and Klopp tried to keep his players as fresh as he could by playing a number of youngsters but it didn’t help their results and the players still looked tired and jaded and struggled to play the high-tempo football from earlier in the season.

Teams Learning How To Play Against Liverpool- We’ve seen many teams play a similar way against Liverpool recently, they sit deep defensively and make it difficult for us to break them down and hit us on the break when we lose possession, and many teams recently have enjoyed success by deploying these tactics against us since the turn of the year.

African Nations- Mane was a big miss throughout January because he is the one player in Liverpool’s squad with pace and Matip was also affected with the African competition despite his decision to retire from international football.

Lack Of Transfer Activity- Many supporters was surprised with the lack of transfer business in January, but Klopp doesn’t seem to like buying players in January and I fully believe he is trying to give the current squad of players a full season and a chance to prove themselves before making changes in the summer.

Despite all these reasons and excuses for Liverpool’s poor form I expect Klopp to turn things around sooner rather later, and he is still the right man for the job.

Liverpool only have league games to play for the rest of this season and that should help them pick up their form with Klopp having more time to work with his players on the training ground.

There is no doubt that results and form have been really disappointing recently but Liverpool still have a great chance to finish in the top four and a win against Tottenham on Saturday would be the perfect tonic to end this poor run of form.