Liverpool, chasing a Champions League spot, lost 2-1 to the Premier League’s worst team on Tuesday. Overall, this is not a great result. They will now face this team again on Friday, away to Wolves at Molineux for the second time in a week.
This time, though, it’s in the FA Cup. Normally this would be a chance to get silverware, but given the Reds’ struggles in the league it could become a distraction and it will be interesting to see how head coach Arne Slaughter handles things from a rotation and squad strength perspective.
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“We have a few options,” Slaughter noted at the pregame press conference. “We don’t have the top 11 but we do have some options. I always have some options so we do have some options. But again, it’s not the first time this season that we’ve dropped points again after three days in a game.
“That’s something I’ve seen us do too much of this year, so it’s been three days since the last game and we have to do better than we did last time against Wolves. But I wouldn’t be a tactical genius if I told them they have to play faster and everyone can say that – but we will say it before the game.”
Whatever the root cause, as has been the case so often this season, Liverpool were slow and too static against Wolves on Tuesday, dominating possession but hesitant to address the issue. Finally, if all players are sluggish, stalled, and indecisive, it’s up to the coach to fix the problem.
In his second year under Slott, the intensity of the Jurgen Klopp era appears to have completely disappeared from the squad, and whatever identity comes to replace it is still difficult to identify from the outside, with the coach and his players running out of time to prove there is a way forward this season.
