{"id":531091,"date":"2025-10-27T12:38:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T12:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/531091\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T12:38:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T12:38:13","slug":"micah-richards-says-one-liverpool-issue-has-been-affecting-virgil-van-dijk-and-ibrahima-konate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/531091\/","title":{"rendered":"Micah Richards says one Liverpool issue has been affecting Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Liverpool are heading towards a real crisis in the Premier League this season.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Arne Slot<\/a> may have thought his nightmare run was over when his side beat Eintracht Frankfurt in the Champions League until the whistle blew on their fourth consecutive loss in the top-flight to Brentford.<\/p>\n

The game ended 3-2 with the Reds looking like the second-best team on the pitch by a mile all night as Keith Andrews exposed the flaws that have been ever apparent in their previous losses.<\/p>\n

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Where Liverpool<\/a> have struggled this season is in the defence, with Virgil van Dijk<\/a> and Ibrahima Konate\u2019s<\/a> usually reliable partnership being undone by mistakes from both men.<\/p>\n

It has been frustrating to watch both men caught out on multiple occasions this season, as both of them are trying to make up for the awful decisions they have made to no avail.<\/p>\n

\"IbrahimaPhoto by Liverpool FC\/Liverpool FC via Getty ImagesMicah Richards says the midfield is affecting Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konate<\/p>\n

There are different reasons as to why it has not been working this season, and it is clear that one issue is the fact that Liverpool are playing a higher line than their title-winning season, which exposes them to long balls.<\/p>\n

Micah Richards<\/a>, though, believes another key aspect of their failure to keep defensive consistency between van Dijk and Konate is the midfield three\u2019s changes from last season.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Virgil van Dijk edges closer to Jamie Carragher\u2019s unwanted Liverpool record following Brentford defeat<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The former Manchester City star pointed out that the switch from the usual midfield three of Dominik Szoboszlai, Alexis Mac Allister, and Ryan Gravenberch has upset the balance of the defence and left the two centre-halves struggling.<\/p>\n

Speaking on The Rest Is Football podcast, Richards explained: \u201c(van Dijk and Konate were awful) Yeah, they were. And I think what we\u2019re seeing now is that van Dijk needs help. How many times in previous seasons has Van Dijk bailed them out and you look at partnerships, and we\u2019ve always talked about Van Dijk and how good he is.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe needs Konate to bail him out at the moment and that\u2019s not happening. So you can\u2019t have two centre halves not playing well at the same time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, if you look at the tactical view, and Al sort of brushed over it there when he made his point, it\u2019s midfield. It\u2019s the midfield area. Mac Allister was protection for them. Gravenberch was protection, and Szoboszlai had legs last season.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow it\u2019s completely different. They\u2019re trying to go with Curtis Jones, a very good player, but he\u2019s not got the defensive qualities of the other midfielders\u2026 It\u2019s energy in midfield why Liverpool were so consistent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arne Slot\u2019s Liverpool struggles will continue this week<\/p>\n

While there is still time to turn this season around quite drastically, the woes for Slot and his team will continue for a week or two longer.<\/p>\n

They host Crystal Palace in the League Cup, who have already beaten them in the Community Shield and the league, with the Aston Villa game set to follow.<\/p>\n

Both are teams that will expose the already glaring issues of this Liverpool side to their advantage because they can play that long type of football so well.<\/p>\n

Unless there is a dramatic shift in their defensive work or Slot\u2019s tactics, their nightmare run may just continue well into November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liverpool are heading towards a real crisis in the Premier League this season. Arne Slot may have thought…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8815],"tags":[748,393,4884,10307,179,338,16,15,1465],"class_list":{"0":"post-531091","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-liverpool","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-ibrahima-konate","12":"tag-liverpool","13":"tag-micah-richards","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-virgil-van-dijk"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115446174649038880","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}