Jamie Carragher said Liverpool are a “mess” and called on head coach Arne Slot to “earn his money” by fixing the issues in the team after suffering back-to-back defeats.
Liverpool fell to a 1-0 defeat at Galatasaray in the Champions League on Tuesday, following a first Premier League loss of the season at Crystal Palace on Saturday, and Carragher said those results had been coming.
The Premier League champions required late goals to win their first five games of the season but after a summer of heavy spending Carragher said Liverpool have lost their balance and called on big-money signing Florian Wirtz to be dropped.
“I’m not watching a top team,” Carragher said on CBS Sports. “Liverpool aren’t playing football at the moment, they are playing basketball. It is just end-to-end and I don’t think top teams play like that.
“I expressed that to the manager early on, he’ll know that a lot better than me. He is obviously a fantastic manager. But right now Liverpool went from, I would call them a workmanlike team last season, and they have sprinkled a little bit of stardust on it terms of the transfers that they have brought in.
“And they haven’t gained anything going forward but they have lost a lot defensively. I think for the manager now, last season was such a smooth ride for them, he’s now got to really earn his money.
“He did last season, won the Premier League, unbelievable. But there’s a few problems there that he has got to fix and it’ll be really interesting how he goes about it. because he’s spent a lot of money.
“Liverpool got battered by Newcastle in the second half of that game. Newcastle had 10 men. That can’t happen. Crystal Palace created seven big chances at the weekend. That’s more than any team has conceded in the Premier League all season. Liverpool are the champions.
“This has been coming. This is not a shock. And the manager needs to fix it.”
Wirtz has yet to score for Liverpool or make an assist since his £116m move from Bayer Leverkusen, and Carragher believes the Reds must go back to the midfield three that led them to the Premier League title last season.
Slot’s side visit Chelsea on Saturday looking to avoid adding a third consecutive, although they will enter the weekend two points clear of Arsenal after six games of the season.
“Right now I don’t think the balance of the team is right and the obvious one that stands out is Florian Wirtz,” Carragher added.
“He’s just not at the races at all. He’s a young boy coming into a new league – he has got plenty of time to go as a Liverpool player but right now I think he needs to come out of the team, Liverpool go back to what they were last season and then go from there and build some confidence, build some defensive solidity.
“Because right now it is a mess. It’s not the losses, it is not the defeats. This has been coming from day one.”