by Let us make one thing clear immediately – Liverpool’s defeat against Fulham should make no difference to the title challenge of this season.
Even after an imaginary day in Craven Cottage, the red are still 11 points in front of Arsenal and need so many points to complete the Premier League crown – if not less.
Should the way Liverpool collapsed in the London sun, should be a problem? Well, yes and no. No, for the reasons mentioned above. Even if the reds crawl over the finish line, it is still a league title, and there is not a single Liverpool supporter that would have been able to be able to do a few years ago.
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But it is one thing that gains one title and another one that presents it because their opponents have thrown into the towel. The selection of Mikel Areta at Everton suggested that he now focuses entirely on the Champions League, which almost gives a defeat in the title race.
The last thing that Liverpool wants to do is to give Arsenal any kind of sniffing so that it may be back in the. And yet Arne Slot has to learn from an error he admitted with a first cutlery in Angeld.
The obvious reluctance of the Liverpool boss to shoot his squad becomes more and more frustrating for the supporters than they see their team stumbling into the title. The problem could not have been encapsulated on Sunday than in Fulham.
Up to the last 15 minutes the reds had been pretty terrible. The difference in these final phases? Harvey Elliott and Federico Chiesa were on the field, and like in the Carabao Cup final, they did more than any other who started the game to almost bring Liverpool back in.
The couple showed the kind of input that the slot asked its players to rediscover after this defeat at Wembley. “Show you the work rate that you used for so many games in a row,” said Slot only last week.
“Paris Saint-Germain was a great example of this, maybe I may have made the biggest mistake by not shot enough.”
Not only that, but he insisted that he trusted the players who were consistently on the sidelines of the start -xi.
“It is not to say that they don’t trust him if they don’t play anyone. I do it,” said Slot.
“But I probably find the others a little better; otherwise I would make a different choice. Or they fit better into the team. Mon has certain properties and cathedral has certain properties and they help each other.
“It is a little more difficult with other players. That makes a team. I can’t play with 11 Mo Salahs and I can’t play with 11 Dominik Szoboszlais.”
Well, here we are two games after the last international break of the season, and we are still talking about Elliott and Chiesa who don’t get their chances. In the meantime, Salah and Szoboszlai, the two players, specially selected, had such a low effect in Craven Cottage.
The reluctance to Chiesa is particularly confusing at this point. Sure, the slot could prefer Diogo Jota as his No. 9, but not many – if at all – can give Liverpool fans who believe that the Italian is now not a better option than Darwin Nunez. However, the Uruguayaner was introduced on Sunday before Chiesa.
This season is not a learning process for the slot. He would not have experienced the sheer quantity of games that he had to reset in the Netherlands, and that before they take into account the expectation that Liverpool will have it will be in all competition.
Making mistakes is part of this process, but it is the crucial aspect to show them that he can learn from them. Slot has to show that he has learned and that means that Elliott and Chiesa give their chances – especially when others stall.
