Manchester United legend Gary Neville thinks Milos Kerkez \u201clooks like a youth team player\u201d after Liverpool lost 2-1 to Chelsea on Saturday,<\/p>\n
The Reds went behind early on at Stamford Bridge to a Moises Caicedo thunderbolt before Cody Gakpo equalised on 63 minutes to give Arne Slot\u2019s side hope of grabbing victory.<\/p>\n
However, it was Chelsea who snatched all three points in the dying moments of the second half with Estevao sliding in at the back post to convert a Marc Cucurella cross.<\/p>\n
Liverpool<\/strong><\/a> are struggling to reach the same levels of performance they experienced last season as Slot won the Premier League title in his first campaign as head coach.<\/p>\n The Reds, who were five points ahead of Arsenal two games ago, have now dropped down to second place in the Premier League table<\/strong><\/a> behind the Gunners, who beat West Ham 2-0 on Saturday.<\/p>\n Big summer signings Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz are struggling to make much of an impact with the club\u2019s summer recruitment coming under the spotlight.<\/p>\n READ:\u00a016 Conclusions on Chelsea 2-1 Liverpool: \u2018Mini crisis\u2019, Slot, Maresca, Mac Allister, Estevao, Jota<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Neville picked out new left-back Kerkez \u2013 who signed from Bournemouth for \u00a340m \u2013 as a big issue for Liverpool with the Hungary international replaced early in the second half for Andy Robertson.<\/p>\n Neville said on his Sky Sports podcast<\/a>: \u201cThe boy Kerkez, to be honest with you, at this point in time, he looks like a youth team player.<\/p>\n \u201cI know he\u2019s a good player, but he looks like he\u2019s playing for the youth team, or the Under-21s. He looks so naive; he looks like a baby out there. He\u2019s losing 50-50s with Neto!<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s had Premier League experience, it\u2019s not like he\u2019s come in from another country. He\u2019s got a lot of games under his belt, he\u2019s played at these grounds before, so I expected him to slot in.<\/p>\n \u201cOne, he\u2019s playing alongside Virgil Van Dijk, the best centre half in the world, so if you want to play in a back four, you want to play with great defenders and he is doing.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd he\u2019s got players who work hard on that side, it\u2019s not like he\u2019s playing on the right with Salah in front of him, which is always a bit more difficult because you always get a little bit more exposed.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I have to say from the first ten minutes of that game against Bournemouth on the first game of the season, he\u2019s struggled.\u201d<\/p>\n MORE LIVERPOOL COVERAGE ON F365\u2026<\/strong> But Neville highlighted that Liverpool\u2019s full-back issues don\u2019t just boil down to Kerkez with Conor Bradley and Jeremie Frimpong struggling on the right.<\/p>\n Neville continued: \u201cFrimpong looks like he should be playing as a right winger, he doesn\u2019t perform like a right-back.<\/p>\n \u201cConor Bradley just isn\u2019t doing it and Andy Robertson is battling but he\u2019s not quite where he was a few years ago.<\/p>\n \u201cLiverpool\u2019s problems are as much to do with full-back as anywhere. They need to button that down.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked about bringing Kerkez off in the second half, Slot replied: \u201cMilos was more and more tired \u2013 he played 90 minutes in two games and now for the third game in a week, which he\u2019s not used to when he played at Bournemouth.<\/p>\n \u201cYou could feel and see it got more and more difficult to keep going and their wingers are a threat so we decided to make a change over there.\u201d<\/p>\n On Bradley\u2019s withdrawal at half-time, Slot added: \u201cMost of the times I have to change the fullbacks after being on yellow. Today Conor Bradley was on a yellow card.<\/p>\n \u201cHe made a second foul and players were asking for a yellow again, so you wonder if it\u2019s smart to keep him on the pitch. We decided not to and we needed Florian to come into the game.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manchester United legend Gary Neville thinks Milos Kerkez \u201clooks like a youth team player\u201d after Liverpool lost 2-1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[18,8141,794,19,17,1009,45126,5,795,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-103829","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-gary-neville","10":"tag-home-page","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-liverpool","14":"tag-milos-kerkez","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-premier-league","17":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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