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LIVERPOOL - Weaknesses
Defensive frailty
Despite the undeniable progress made by Liverpool under Jurgen Klopp, there have been some recurring themes which proved detrimental to their aspirations: inability to kill off small teams, goalkeeping errors and defensive blunders.
Liverpool's swashbuckling style of play means they score goals aplenty, it also means they concede goals by the bucketload. While this makes for entertaining excitement for the neutral viewer, it is a disastrous pattern for a club aiming to challenge for top honours, especially if the goals conceded come about due to comical non-league defending, which most of them are.
The chief culprit of this malaise is 29-year-old Croatian international Dejan Lovren, and the culmination of his palpability came about in a 31-minute farce against Tottenham, where he made two errors gifting Tottenham goals, and was run ragged for the duration of his half-hour stay on the pitch before being hauled off by Klopp.
He also shows a tendency to repeat mistakes, as evidenced by Eden Dzeko's first goal in Liverpool's 5-2 first-leg victory over Roma in the Champions League, where Lovren misjudged the flight of the ball, leaving Eden Dzeko to bury into the net, in an erringly similar way to the goal he gave Harry Kane in the aforementioned match.
Other guilty parties include Joel Matip and Alberto Moreno, and moving ahead, Liverpool's weak defence is an issue Klopp must address if they are to fulfil their ambitions.
Inability to kill off small teams
Liverpool have constantly gone toe-to-toe with their direct rivals in the Premier League, and Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool have the best record against the top six sides since he arrived in England.
Liverpool's wonderful performances against their rivals are supposed to see them in a favourable position challenging for the top spots, however, that is not the case, as another of Liverpool's banes has been their inability to finish off the small teams.
A hallmark of Mourinho's greatest Premier League sides was their capacity to totally decimate lower quality opposition, while playing it safe against the big teams, and this proved immensely successful, owing to the number of Premier League titles he has won.
Liverpool would do well to learn from this, as they have frustratingly dropped points which they had no reason to, particularly in the 2016/2017 season, where Liverpool lost only six matches, but of those six, four came against teams who were in the bottom three at the time they played Liverpool. while the club also threw away a 3-1 lead against Bournemouth to lose 4-3, and drew away to Sunderland.
Beyond the psychological advantage it gives, there are no extra points awarded for defeating your rivals, so a win against Manchester City is worth exactly the same number of points as a win against Wolves, and since there are more 'small teams' than 'big teams', Jurgen Klopp would do well to banish under-performances against the small teams to the past for Liverpool to meet it's objectives.
