The Echo<\/a>. \u201cVirgil van Dijk is now 34 and he made two mistakes in the Community Shield final\u2014he was at fault for both goals just by being six inches too late. There is no doubt about it, at 34 the decline has started.<\/p>\n\u201cHe is still a wonderful player, but he will be on that slope and the same with Mohamed Salah\u2014that worries me. The biggest mystery to me [though] would be Isak. When you buy a player, you\u2019re looking to take all the grey areas out of the deal but there are no grey areas with Isak.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s performed in the Premier League and has shown that he can play at a big club. So you think that when he comes to Liverpool that he would just slot in immediately, but that\u2019s not happened. Isak is a proper player, and he will get important goals, but right now it\u2019s not working.\u201d<\/p>\n
Isak missed pre-season as he pushed for his eventual record \u00a3125M move to Liverpool, but we\u2019re now nearly into December and he still hasn\u2019t managed a single moment of impact for his new club. In Saturday\u2019s 3-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest, he was easily marked out of the game.<\/p>\n
There has been talk of a lack of service from midfield and the wings, but Isak has also appeared either unwilling or unable so far to provide options\u2014to peel off a marker, make speculative channel runs, or drop between the lines to receive a pass\u2014when Liverpool have the ball.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also Florian Wirtz, the Bundesliga\u2019s best player last season and another \u00a3100M+ signing who has looked anonymous. For Souness, a lot of that is likely down to the increased intensity of his new league. Put everything together, though, and you get an underperforming side.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to say that the Bundesliga is several rungs down the ladder compared to the intensity that the boys have to perform to every single week in the Premier League,\u201d Souness added of Wirtz. \u201cThere is no doubt he has the ability, but this must be a period of adjustment for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWirtz is 22 years old, so is he feeling the pressure of the price tag? When you play for Liverpool, every game is a final for the opposition. There are no doubts he has the technique [so] I wouldn\u2019t be making my mind up too soon\u2014let\u2019s see where we\u2019re at come the end of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When things are going badly in football, everybody has their own differing opinion as to why\u2014and what to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8815],"tags":[748,393,4884,179,8934,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-593057","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-liverpool","12":"tag-liverpool-team-news","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115611009439134745","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593057","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=593057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}