Riise: Klopp keeps making same mistakes

Liverpool hero, John Arne Riise, has taken aim at manager Jurgen Klopp for their problems this season.

Klopp should have done more to halt Liverpool’s alarming slide in form, with his lack of tactical flexibility exposed over the last two months, insists Riise.

“It’s hurts to talk about it because it’s my team, but we have never seen a collapse like this,” admitted Riise to the Sunday World.

read also:Van Dijk, Gomez unlikely to play in Euros – Klopp

“You can lose six games in a row if you are a team that has had a few years of bad football, but the way Liverpool have played over the last two years, you don’t expect this to happen this quickly. I’m very surprised – and it is all a bit of a shock, to be honest.

“I’m not a manager of Klopp’s standards and I can’t tell him what to do, but I have had a few thoughts when I’ve seen his team in 2021 – and it feels like he could have done more to stop this run.

“For me, when you have 18 or 19 different pairings of centre-halves and the midfield keeps changing, you don’t have the same relations between the players that you normally have.

“I also feel teams have got used to playing against Liverpool at Anfield. They sit deep, they are more compact, they hit them on the counter-attack and Liverpool keep playing a high line defensively.

“You can say its confidence and mental fatigue and maybe that is a factor, but I can’t stress enough that when you don’t have the players you normally had, it’s tough to play the kind of football you want.

“Nobody is going to do the job of Van Dijk or Gomez in terms of speed, so when opposition play balls in behind they know they are not as quick.

“So Liverpool are getting punished more now than if they had all their players available. This is why I feel they could have looked at a change their approach.”