The positives and negatives of Liverpool's victorious trip to Sunderland
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Sunderland v Liverpool - Premier League - Stadium of Light | Owen Humphreys - PA Images/GettyImagesConsistency has been Ibou’s crux these days, but if we can get 3 or 4 more of those performances in the next few weeks, we’ll be in a much better position because of it.Wataru Endo was good in the tackle as we’d expect, but his night was cut painfully short. These types of elements have been our undoing at times this season.Sunderland flew out of the blocks of the opening 2-3 minutes, as expected, and I was sitting convinced that I’d seen this game before multiple times this season, but it didn’t last.Sunderland v Liverpool - Premier League | Liverpool FC/GettyImagesThrough a combination of Sunderland sitting off slightly and our patient passing, the crowd never got into it.As the game went on, we grew into it and ended up craving out a few chances and shots before halftime.
All the while, the work we were doing was keeping a lid on things.There was a small spike in the decibel level after halftime, but our goal quickly killed that, and as a result, they never really got going.Regis Le Bris tactics definitely had something to do with how things went tonight, but we also never opened the door for Sunderland, and we’ve had a tendency to do that more often than not.Far from perfect, but we’ve been far worse.The NegativesTeam selectionThere are some things that I’ll never understand: Quantum mechanics, why I can’t sink a putt over 20 feet, and why Arne Slot continues to pick Alexis Mac Allister over Curtis Jones.Whatever your opinion on Slot, he’s proven that he isn’t the best at dropping players who aren’t in form. He adopts the approach of letting them play through their bad patches.If you haven’t got a choice in the matter, I will not complain, but you have a fully fit Jones just gathering dust on the bench whilst Macca struggles for 80 minutes before getting hooked.Macca was responsible for a lot of our dispossessions and turnovers, especially in the 2nd half, and when Slot finally made the move, Jones instantly made a difference.Maybe something is going on behind the scenes that we don’t know, but if it’s purely football and form-based, Jones should start 10 times out of 10.Then we cast our eyes a little further up the pitch towards our wingers.
It’s important we build around the world class stars we have currently, and unfortunately for us and our strict expectations, those numbers are low.Looking ahead to next season, based on the performances of this, I think we have 3-4 stand out, world-class, league winner types, and the rest are there to prop them up.Sunderland v Liverpool - Premier League | Robbie Jay Barratt - AMA/GettyImagesEkitike, Szoboszlai, Gravenberch, and the best of the lot, Florian Wirtz.There is a reason why our most dangerous attacks start and end right up the middle of the park, because that’s where our best players are.As soon as we introduce width, the standard almost immediately drops, and you can see the frustration in some players when it does.Tonight was a prime example. As soon as he knocked it out wide, our chances of being impactful dropped.We need to surround these superstars with a little bit more quality if we’re going to get anywhere near where we think we should be, and with the money we’ve spent, we ought to be.A work in progress for sure, and maybe we can’t be too critical for the remainder of the season, given what we have at our disposal, but without Champions League football, our rebuild gets delayed, and we can’t really afford for that to happen.Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow