Liverpool news: Four players branded ‘useless’ as major transfer disagreement emerges

Liverpool suffered their third straight defeat in all competitions after being beaten 2-1 by Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, with a last-minute winner from teenage sensation Estevao deciding the tie

It’s been a real Jekyll-and-Hyde season for Liverpool so far. After an imperious run of victories – the majority sealed by dramatic late winners – the Reds have had a mini collapse, suffering three consecutive defeats, two of them decided by stoppage-time heartbreakers.

Chelsea were the latest to twist the knife, with Brazilian wonderkid Estevao netting the decider in the 95th minute – perhaps the first of many vital goals for the Blues. The hosts had taken the lead in the first half through a thunderbolt from man of the match Moises Caicedo – a player Liverpool once coveted, and even tried, unsuccessfully, to snatch from Chelsea’s grasp.

Cody Gakpo pulled the visitors level midway through the second half, but Chelsea finished the stronger. Estevao, introduced on 75 minutes, lit up the pitch with flashes of samba flair before meeting Marc Cucurella’s cross to steer home a dramatic winner – sending Stamford Bridge into rapturous, gate-rattling delirium.

In truth, Liverpool have looked fragile all season. Performances have been flat, the summer recruits are yet to make an impact, the defence remains porous and on-field cohesion appears at an all-time low under Arne Slot.

With plenty for the Merseysiders to reflect on during the international break, Mirror Football rounds up the latest Liverpool news.

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Four ‘useless’ players and ‘a baby’

Gary Neville offered a scathing assessment in the wake of Liverpool’s defeat in West London. The Manchester United great, who was on co-commentary duty, singled out the Reds’ misfiring attack, calling the quartet on the pitch in the final stages [Mo Salah, Hugo Ekitike, Florian Wirtz and Cody Gapko] “absolutely useless.”

“A lot has been made of Liverpool’s defensive work, and rightly so, but today that’s not why they’ve lost this game,” he said on The Gary Neville Podcast. “They’ve lost this game because in the last 15-20 minutes, their creative players, their players in the final half of the pitch, the midfielders and the forwards who were absolutely useless.

“They were giving the ball away like you wouldn’t believe. Gakpo down here, Salah over on that far side; the wastage. Wirtz not knowing how to get into a game in the last 15 minutes when it was there for the taking, and just almost sort of marking Caicedo, I was watching him a lot.”

Neville didn’t stop there. He also took aim at left-back Milos Kerkez, who endured a torrid afternoon against Pedro Neto before being substituted after 55 minutes, branding the summer signing “a baby.”

“The boy Kerkez, to be honest with you, at this point in time, he looks like a youth-team player,” he said. “I know he’s a good player, but he looks like he’s playing for the youth team, or the Under-21s. He looks so naive; he looks like a baby out there. He’s losing 50-50s with Neto!”

Neville then turned his attention to Liverpool’s other struggling full-backs. “[Jeremie] Frimpong looks like he should be playing as a right winger, he doesn’t perform like a right-back,” Neville added. “Conor Bradley just isn’t doing it and Andy Robertson is battling but he’s not quite where he was a few years ago. Liverpool’s problems are as much to do with full-back as anywhere. They need to button that down.”

Alexander-Arnold disagreement

With Liverpool’s full-backs all at sea, Trent Alexander-Arnold’s summer departure has been put back into the spotlight. The England international, who joined Real Madrid in June, left a gaping hole on Liverpool’s right-hand side – and Jamie Redknapp believes his absence is affecting the entire team.

“They’ve got problems at full-back. They’re missing Trent [Alexander-Arnold],” Redknapp said on Sky Sports. “They haven’t played the same right-back since the Burnley game. [Conor] Bradley had a tough 45 minutes. [Milos] Kerkez hasn’t quite adapted either – the pressure of playing for Bournemouth isn’t the same.

“They have problems all over the pitch, but especially at full-back with [Andy] Robertson’s injury at the end. This international break could be a good chance to reset.”

However, Liverpool skipper Virgil van Dijk was quick to play down the idea that Alexander-Arnold’s exit is solely to blame, insisting their issues stem from “a combination of things,” including new players settling in.

“It’s not about him [Alexander-Arnold],” the Dutchman said. “He had amazing quality but he left us. Last year, we played a lot of games without him as well. Obviously we were all gutted that he left in the summer, but that is not the issue.

“How we work, it happened all season last year, and everything was positive and everyone was happy, and now we have a little blip, if you want to call it like that, and now we need everyone more than ever to support us and be there for us.

“It is not that easy [to sum up the problems]. Obviously [new players adjusting] plays a part as well, but that shouldn’t be the only focus. It is a combination of everything. It is down to us to work to turn this around and find consistency, to not concede goals, to score goals, to create, to not give up chances against us.”

Fresh injury problems

Defeat wasn’t the only setback for Liverpool at Stamford Bridge, as concerns over the fitness of both Ibrahima Konate and Andy Robertson bookended a difficult evening for the champions. Konate limped off just 10 minutes into the second half, while Robertson was seen hobbling after the final whistle, requiring help from a member of staff as he headed towards the tunnel.

When asked after the game about Konate’s issue, Slot said: “I don’t know if it’s a big injury, but I do know that he limped. And I asked him, and he said: ‘I feel my quad a little bit’.

“But for me all alarm bells go off because in another sprint then you never know if that is going to go good, so it was already a substitution I had in mind for maybe a little bit later… So it might be okay and he went off early enough, but it was clear that I had to take him off because he was limping.”

Liverpool were already without first-choice goalkeeper Alisson Becker, sidelined with a thigh injury, and Giovanni Leoni, who suffered a devastating ACL injury last month. The club will be hoping Konate and Robertson return quickly – not just to keep the injury list manageable, but also to stabilise a backline that has looked alarmingly vulnerable in recent weeks.

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