One Liverpool player has been singled out as a potential ‘weakness’ in Arne Slot’s starting XI after he ‘cost his team’ against Fulham on Saturday.
The most recent match at Anfield isn’t one that Andy Robertson will cherish, with the left-back having been clattered by Issa Diop, beaten to the ball by Andreas Pereira for the visitors’ opening goal and sent off for being adjudged to have denied a goalscoring opportunity, all inside the opening 17 minutes.
The Scotland captain has had to endure some criticism of his recent performances, and one pundit has begged the question as to whether the 30-year-old is now a weak link in his team.
Mustoe suggests Robertson is now a ‘weakness’ for Liverpool
On The 2 Robbies podcast for NBC Sports, Robbie Mustoe was evaluating the Liverpool match on Saturday when he honed on in the Reds’ number 26.
The ex-Middlesbrough midfielder said: “Robertson, again…Is weakness too hard a word for Liverpool, a weakness at left-back? There’s been a couple of challenges now and a couple of mistakes.
“He’s been a brilliant, brilliant player, but I just wonder if he’s lost that little step and is just making a few errors. Maybe I’m out of order, maybe it’s just a bad little period for him, but again, it’s probably cost his team a couple of points.”
Not vintage Robertson, but he’s still vital for Liverpool
Robertson may had a nightmare afternoon against Fulham, and his attacking output has diminished this season with just one assist in 21 games so far, but some of the criticism which had been levelled at him by pundits and a section of LFC fans on social media has been excessive.
It was only six days ago that he was named Player of the Match by UEFA in Liverpool’s hard-fought Champions League win over Girona, so it’s not as if his form has gone completely down the toilet.
He’ll be 31 in March, so perhaps the long-serving Scot has lost some of the effervescence which has characterised his time at Anfield, but it’d be far too premature to suggest that he’s in terminal decline.
With Kostas Tsimikas still out injured, Slot will have no natural senior left-back for our next three games. The Dutchman will therefore need to either trust in the ever-versatile Joe Gomez in that position or throw James Norris into the fray just as Jurgen Klopp did with Conor Bradley on the other flank at the start of this year.
We mightn’t have seen vintage Robertson for much of the season so far, but we’re definitely not prepared to give up on him being a crucial figure for Liverpool in the months ahead.