Daniel’s Debrief: Luton 1-1 Liverpool

Until now, this season has seen Liverpool look like their 2017/18 and 2021/22 selves.

Today, they regress to their 2022/23 selves.

A lack of creativity, a lack of desire and a lack of cutting edge costs Liverpool two points in a performance that just isn’t acceptable.

We saw this so many times last season and I thought we were over it.

Liverpool create 3.51 worth of xG yet only score once and can consider themselves extremely fortunate to come away with a draw, such is the depth that their performance levels sink to.

A lot of attention will go onto Darwin Nunez and I completely understand why, for an unforgivable miss in the second half at 0-0 - though I do think Kostas Tsimikas was offside so it might not have counted anyway - but he was far from being alone in letting himself down today.

There’s probably four or five of Liverpool’s fifteen used today that can come out of that with any degree of respectability whatsoever, and two of them are substitutes.

Liverpool are lethargic and lacking desire and quality right from the start. Despite their possession having no bounds, they produce so little in terms of good chances, Nunez shooting from distance on a number of occasions and Diogo Jota seeing his shot well saved by Thomas Kaminski.

Nunez also hits the bar after a lovely ball from Trent Alexander-Arnold. He is probably the best playmaker in the team today and spreads the ball beautifully from right to left on two occasions, but his defending was absolutely abysmal, and Chiedozie Ogbene was beating him all ends up for most of the afternoon.

Still, he’s not the only one. Ibrahima Konate has a terribly strange first half that sees him give a couple of completely needless fouls away, as well as go on an uncharacteristically long dribble from his own half to the edge of the Luton box.

What’s been so good for Liverpool in attack this season has been the chemistry and connection between the forwards, and the midfielders. But there’s so little of it here, with Nunez playing his own game, and Mohamed Salah barely even involved for much of it. Jota was pretty quiet too.

The midfield has probably its worst outing of the season so far. Dominik Szoboszlai hasn’t been that quiet in a Liverpool shirt yet, and Alexis Mac Allister followed up his best performance last week with his worst one here.

Mac Allister gives the ball away far too easily all day and is given the run-around by an athletic midfield pivot of Ross Barkley and Marvelous Nakamba. He gets himself booked in the second half and duly misses Brentford next week, but will be back for Manchester City after the international break.

I’ll be interested to see what Klopp does next week at Anfield. Curtis Jones has been a big miss since his suspension, and the injury that kept him out of today, and if he’s available, we might see him at DM like we did in pre-season. Alternatively, he may give Wataru Endo his first league start since Newcastle.

Ryan Gravenberch is the best of Liverpool’s front six, as it were. He has a few moments where he drives well and in the second half, forces Kaminski into a save with a rasping shot from the edge of the box. I know he tires, but I’m not sure he was the right man to bring off.

Liverpool’s biggest problem for the opening 60 or 70 minutes of that game was a lack of width. Against a back three, they never looked to move the three centre-backs around or play around the outside of them.

Klopp kind of resigns us to this fate with his team selection - he chooses Joe Gomez at left-back presumably to deal with Luton’s physicality and in the hope that Alexander-Arnold will be able to invert so often that Gomez can essentially play as a third centre-back.

We’ll come onto Kostas Tsimikas later on, but it’s a huge vote of no confidence when a right-footed centre-back is being chosen ahead of you, the only fit left-back, to play in your position.

But with Gomez, Gravenberch and Jota down that left flank, you’ve got three right-footed players. 

And then on the right flank, Salah looks to invert on his left, and Alexander-Arnold is looking to invert into the middle.

Luton control the space so well and with so much ease, because Liverpool have zero natural width in the team, playing on the smallest pitch in the Premier League, and so haven’t got the personnel to disrupt Luton’s shape and system.

This was perhaps a poor decision from Klopp to not choose Tsimikas for this one, but if he did want to play Gomez at left-back, he should’ve had Alexander-Arnold playing as a conventional right-back.

Luton want it so much more than Liverpool do and there’s a lack of urgency and a degree of arrogance to Liverpool’s play. At no point do they look frustrated in their performance and at no point do you see a switch flick and the tempo upped.

Complacency in these fixtures is always the big danger but it’s such a theme of the last few years and it’s one of the very few criticisms you can have of the Klopp era.

Turning up away from home to newly-promoted clubs and not matching their desire, aggression and work-rate.

Fulham, Bournemouth and Forest last season.

Brentford in 21/22.

West Brom and Fulham in 20/21.

Sheffield United in 19/20.

All examples of games we’ve either dropped points in, or been very fortunate to win.

It’s a trend that’s got to stop because this is a team that with its attacking firepower but weaknesses at the base of midfield is designed to get as many points as possible from the bottom half of the league.

To drop two here, with such a dreadful performance, is bitterly disappointing.

When their goal comes, it’s not such a huge surprise as they have a few decent moments beforehand, warning signs that Liverpool choose to ignore.

Alisson Becker does well for one and Virgil Van Dijk, who is defending on his own, for another.

Harvey Elliott, on as a sub, loses the ball from a corner (but makes up for it later), and then some half-arsed defending from Konate presents Luton with a two-on-two.

Issa Kabore stands Tsimikas up, and the left-back, also on from the bench, refuses to make a decision, and Kabore is able to play the pass and do what he wants to because Tsimikas doesn’t commit either way. Tahith Chong scores.

He’s at fault for Leicester’s goal in the League Cup a month or so ago when again, he doesn’t stop the counter-attack. He’s absolutely woeful at defensive reading and decision-making.

That being said, Konate could’ve wiped out the attack after Ross Barkley’s pass with a tactical foul - something akin to the one he gets away with against Everton would’ve been ideal.

A very, very poor goal to concede, especially given that Liverpool’s counter-attacks, such a strong point this season, were all coming to nothing.

Nunez snatches at every chance he gets and while there’s been Fernando Torres comparisons of late, he’s missing the poise and composure in front of goal that the Spaniard had.

I’ve not even mentioned the criminal miss at 0-0, partly because Tsimikas was offside in the build-up, so it wouldn’t have counted, but partly because I’m not sure what to say other than that he needs to become familiar with the art of just prodding the ball home, rather than leathering every shot he has.

Elliott and Luis Diaz finally bring some width to the team when they come on, while I barely even remember Cody Gakpo contributing. I wouldn’t have taken Jota off though, he’s someone who could’ve scrapped himself a goal and had Liverpool in front.

He should really take Nunez off, put Jota central and Diaz on the left. What we end up with is a 2-5-3 system that sees people getting in one another’s way constantly.

Elliott puts in a few good crosses from the right that aren’t turned home, until finally Diaz rises high to head home an equaliser. Superb header from a really good ball and those two substitutes were two that can hold their heads high for their contribution.

You’d expect Liverpool to attack for the final few minutes of added time in search of an improbable, and undeserved, winner, but with Luton hemmed into their own box, Tsimikas gives away two completely brainless fouls and relieves the pressure.

He caps off his incredible cameo with a backwards pass right at the end of the game, when Liverpool had some momentum and bodies forward.

Of the starters, Konate, Nunez, Salah, Alexander-Arnold and Mac Allister (who somehow stays on for the full game) range somewhere between bad and diabolical.

Too many Liverpool players just don’t show up here and don’t show the quality and the fight that their opponents do. Barkley, Ogbene, Teden Mengi and Alfie Doughty are all brilliant on the day.

Liverpool produce 3.51 xG but it feels like so much of that is built up through a high quality of low-xG attempts from Nunez, Alexander-Arnold, Salah and Gravenberch.

Kaminski, who is a good keeper, has little in the way of challenge.

Still, that xG should be more than enough to win a game yet we don’t. 

Away form generally isn’t great, with just two away wins all season and two points from our last three on the road. Our home form has been impeccable but needs to be backed up by the away form in order to compete at the top.

Today looked like the performance of a top 4 competitor rather than a title challenger and that’s concerning.

It’s possibly a wake-up call that this side isn’t the finished article, which it’s never going to be after so much upheaval in the summer.

But so much of that result, I think, comes down to attitude, rather than personnel.

Spurs win at Luton, and you’d back Man City and Arsenal too as well. To that effect, we’ve lost points.

However, Liverpool win at Wolves in September, where City lose two weeks later, and Liverpool win at Newcastle, where Arsenal lose this weekend.

So this result doesn’t define anything at all, but we can’t have too many more days like this.

Daniel