Slot must axe Liverpool talent who’s “one of the best”

Liverpool meet Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on Saturday evening, and Arne Slot’s side need both a win and a big performance after back-to-back defeats.

Conceding a last-minute winner at Selhurst Park gave the Reds a taste of their own medicine, ending their flawless start to the Premier League season. The champions have mastered the art of late goals across the opening weeks, but these stirring moments have also papered over a general lack of cohesion and slickness.

This was underlined by a wretched performance in the Champions League on Wednesday, losing 1-0 to Galatasaray.

One of the most contentious talking points so far this season for the Merseysiders has been the addition of £116m man Florian Wirtz, who arrived as one of the most prodigious creative talents in the world but has struggled for form ever since his arrival.

Will he be in the starting line-up in west London?

Why Slot should start Wirtz

Wirtz is only 22 and clearly undergoing a difficult integration process, having left his German homeland to further his career in the Premier League. Six matches deep, he has yet to score or assist, lacking the quality and confidence that were anticipated.

But it’s there, latent, and there is every belief and expectation from Slot and Liverpool’s coaching staff that he will come good. Liverpool’s current issues stretch far wider than merely Wirtz’s poor form, after all, with tactical imbalances sighted across the park.

Whether Liverpool opt to drop Wirtz, bringing Dominik Szoboszlai back into his shuffling number ten role, keep him where he is, or actually push him over to the left flank at the expense of Cody Gakpo remains to be seen.

For Wirtz to adjust, Liverpool need to recover their former fluidity in possession and when building attacking play.

And there have been any number of poor performers in Red so far this season, with fellow newbie Milos Kerkez yet to rediscover the form with Bournemouth last year that earned the left-back a place in the PFA Premier League Team of the Year.

Slot must drop Milos Kerkez

When Liverpool signed Kerkez from Bournemouth for £45m during the summer, they knew they had landed a top talent, described by one analyst as “one of the best ball-carrying full-backs in the Premier League“.

But we haven’t yet seen that same player, with the 21-year-old struggling to adapt to Slot’s tactical vision at Liverpool. One of the main reasons behind this is that he has been kept in a fairly rigid left-sided role. Kerkez thrives in shuttling forward, taking on opponents and stretching and overlapping to add a dimension to the attack.

Given the way Liverpool are playing at the moment, and indeed their struggles in the build-up, it might make sense for Slot to recall the vice-captain, Andy Robertson, to the starting fold.

Robertson, 31, is not the player he once was, but he’s still one of the most accomplished and experienced full-backs in Europe, with a crisp and intelligent passing game that could restore some semblance of progression to Liverpool’s up-the-pitch play.

While he’s only played twice in the league so far this season, the Scotland skipper has created five big chances, as per Sofascore. Moreover, he has played confident matches against Atletico Madrid in the Champions League and Southampton in the Carabao Cup.

Kerkez, conversely, flattered to deceive last time out, branded by the Liverpool Echo with a 5/10 match score, noted to have failed in his attempts to get things moving from an attacking standpoint. Across the 90 minutes of action in Istanbul, Kerkez lost the ball ten times, committed two fouls and failed to create a single chance.

It’s not all his fault. The lad is young and adapting to a system which is struggling to purr; the same principle can be attributed to Wirtz. The spotlight has never been brighter.

The data pool is shallow; we are still early into the new campaign. However, are are a couple of concerning trends emerging. Kerkez’s searing speed and natural creative flair have not been aptly utilised across these opening weeks. At least, Slot is not promoting them in the way fans might have hoped for.

And given the less-mobile role he is playing, perhaps Robertson would be a good pick against a Chelsea team who create their fair share of chances and are also there for the taking, with a spate of absences hitting their backline.

Though this might feel like the right time for Kerkez to come into his own, Liverpool’s problems really do run deeper than one individual player, and that’s why Slot must revert to type, allowing Robertson to calmly guide his outfit back into form with accurate, forward passing, still shuffling forward when the need arises.

According to BBC Sport analyst Raj Chohan, Liverpool’s tactical tweaks this season, emphasising central build-up play, have left Kerkez “isolated”. In order to maximise his potential, he must be used in an active, touchline-hugging role.

That’s proving an issue at this current moment for the Reds, who are hardly in a crisis but do have a number of creases to iron out before the season reaches the midsection.

Liverpool cannot afford to toil and bore against Chelsea. They must come racing out of the traps, and then they must sustain an intense and coherent performance at Stamford Bridge.

Perhaps unleashing the tried-and-tested Robertson would help establish Liverpool’s tactics on the evening.