Arne Slot got it wrong and two Liverpool players should be hammered for what they did

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In his latest column, John Aldridge reflects on the defeat at Crystal Palace and what Liverpool boss Arne Slot should do with Hugo Ekitike and Alexander IsakThe Liverpool FC, Tranmere and Republic of Ireland great, Aldo's lively and opinionated weekly column on LFC is a must read for all Reds fans.Arne Slot hasn’t got much wrong during his time in charge at Liverpool. But he certainly made an error with his team selection at Crystal Palace on Saturday.From the very first whistle, you could see the plan to have Florian Wirtz as a floating attacking midfielder simply wasn’t going to work.

It was strange that so many should have been off it on the same day.Liverpool, though, should have known an awful lot better. They were given a clear indication of what to expect when they faced Palace in the Community Shield at Wembley last month.Palace do the same things – they defend well, they have strong, quick players up top, are good at set-pieces and are dangerous on the counter-attack.READ MORE: Federico Chiesa absent from Liverpool Champions League squad for GalatasarayREAD MORE: Galatasaray boss makes 'fear' claim and details injury concern for Liverpool - 'Not really that team'We didn’t seem to learn from any of that.

Our two full-backs were pushing on and it isolated our two centre-backs and allowed the Palace forwards to just run at them with the Liverpool midfield not doing their job properly either.To be fair, Palace boss Oliver Glasner said it was the best he’d ever seen his team play, but they were definitely helped by Liverpool.We had a lot of possession but never really looked like we had a grip of the game in the first half, even though Ibrahima Konate missed a sitter and Ryan Gravenberch had a shot against the post.But Palace looked like they could score every time they went forward and if it wasn’t for Alisson Becker being superb in goal the home team would have been out of sight by half-time.The balance of the team was all wrong, with Wirtz too narrow and nobody on the left flank.Thankfully Slot was aware of it and changed things around at the interval and Cody Gakpo gave us much more width.And when Federico Chiesa popped up for a late equaliser, you’d have taken the result there and then. It isn’t good enough right now.Hugo a big missThe stupidity of Hugo Ekitike’s red card against Southampton came back to bite Liverpool at Crystal Palace.Ekitike would have been a good option to come off the bench in the second half and would have offered a different problem for the Palace defenders.And it could well have been that Ekitike and Alexander Isak were paired together up front.That will come eventually, although it will be interesting to see how Slot works it.