Manchester United legend Gary Neville reckons Liverpool boss Arne Slot must drop Milos Kerkez to see an improvement in performances.
The Reds started off the season in brilliant form with Slot’s outfit winning all five of their first five Premier League matches to go top of the standings.
But since then it’s been a disaster with Liverpool losing five of their last six matches in all competitions and all four of their last four Premier League games.
Neville thinks Liverpool, who have dropped down to seventh in the Premier League table, could have more points on the board this season if they’d taken their chances and replaced some of their underperforming players.
Kerkez, who scored in their 3-2 defeat to Brentford on Saturday, has been largely poor since joining from Bournemouth in the summer and now Neville reckons he needs to be dropped.
Neville said on Sky Sports: “I actually think that there were quite a few of those games they’ve lost that they could have won, flipping it the other way if they had taken their chances.
“Early on in the season, I felt their full-backs weren’t right, maybe Ibrahima Konate times wasn’t right and Virgil van Dijk was holding them together and Alisson was in goal.
“You’ve got two world-class performers there in Van Dijk and Alisson, but the virus is catching. It’s not just going now into the left-back.
“The left-back is becoming a worry. He [Kerkez] scored last night but watching him, he has to be taken out I think.
“I’m worried about the right-back. [Jeremie] Frimpong isn’t a right-back. Conor Bradley has been given his head and I’m supportive of that because I think there’s a lot of talent there, but it’s difficult when your team are conceding goals and the pressure is on.”
Neville added: “If he carries on playing Kerkez at left-back and he carries on playing Bradley at right-back, and they carry on being as exposed as they are in midfield, you’ll keep getting the same results.
“Every single game you’ll be flipping a coin and thinking, ‘Are we gonna win or are we gonna lose?’, and that can’t be what Liverpool are about with the way they’ve performed in these last 12 months.
“I like the manager a lot, I like his way of working, I like his manner in press conferences, it doesn’t look like there’s any panic there from him.
“But deep down, it looks like he’s going to have to interfere with this. He cannot keep allowing the same things to happen each week.”
The former Man Utd defender insists Liverpool head coach Slot must change his side to guarantee a “strong foundation” in order to rebuild their season.
Neville continued: “Slot’s Liverpool do remind me of our team at Manchester United.
“We went through these mad periods where we’d concede goals. It always looked like we would score but we were all over the place. That wasn’t all the time but there were moments I remember these things happening.
“What he [Sir Alex Ferguson] would do is he might put John O’Shea at left-back, me at right-back or Wes Brown at right-back, almost go to four centre-backs, and then really narrow the midfield and make them more solid.
“One thing you can guarantee with Mohamed Salah, Hugo Ekitike, Florian Wirtz, Alexander Isak, Cody Gakpo, and the others they’ve got, is that they’ll score goals.
“So the seven plus the goalkeeper are responsible for making sure they’re solid and they’re not open or exposed all the time. It sounds quite defensive and it sounds like going back to base camp and starting from scratch, but sometimes you have to do that.
“When everything’s crazy, chaotic and mad, which it is for Liverpool at the moment, you just have to find a strong foundation and that means putting players in there that can keep a narrow back four, prevent spaces, win you duels, make sure you don’t give away easy goals, play it forward quicker than you have been and stop popping it through midfield.
“Just be a little bit more direct, knowing that front three will win you games. That happened at United a lot and I just wonder whether it’s a time now for Arne Slot to simplify and pull it back.”