Theo Walcott believes Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk looks ‘an absolute shadow of a player’ and said Arne Slot’s side must ‘ignore their egos’ in the event that they are to get back to their best.
The defending champions won their opening five games of the brand new Premier League season, but a disastrous run of form now has them seventh within the table and 7 points off leaders Arsenal.
The Reds suffered yet one more loss on the weekend, a 3-2 defeat to Brentford, meaning they’ve won just one in every of their last six games in all competitions and have lost 4 on the bounce within the league.
Despite the departures of Trent Alexander-Arnold and Luis Diaz, Liverpool went some method to strengthening their squad by spending almost £450million in the summertime window.
Nevertheless, the high-profile signings of Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak are yet to pay dividends, and have left Slot consistently chopping and changing as he looks to search out a set-up which gets one of the best out of his new-look squad.
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The fixtures proceed to come back thick and fast for the Reds, with a Carabao Cup tie against Crystal Palace on Wednesday, before games against Aston Villa, Real Madrid and Manchester City before the international break.
And Walcott said Slot must get his side specializing in the fundamentals ahead of what could prove a pivotal few weeks within the Dutchman’s reign on Merseyside.
‘I feel that they’re overthinking quite loads and that comes all the way down to the manager,’ Walcott said on It’s Called Soccer.
‘After they signed a great deal of players all of us went ‘Oh they’ll win the league, they’ve signed all these players’ and it was like a fantasy league.
‘Now while you have a look at the larger picture and take a look at to implement your style onto a team that didn’t actually must change that much since it wasn’t broken.
‘Attempting to implement five, six, seven recent players right into a title-winning team doesn’t occur often.
‘You don’t must tweak an excessive amount of while you win the league, you actually don’t, and I feel there are players who aren’t themselves because they’re overthinking and so they are usually not playing as a team.
‘They’re a bunch of people straight away, too many egos, they should separate that and take a look at and deal with getting back to basics.’
Analysing Liverpool’s deficiencies further, Walcott pinpointed the spine of the team as a notable concern, particularly the centre-back partnership of Van Dijk and Ibrahima Konate.
‘You’ve Virgil van Dijk who looks an absolute shadow of a player, Konate has been up and down,’ the previous Arsenal forward added. ‘There is no such thing as a structure to the best way they play now, there’s no balance.
‘Virgil used to have a solid brick in front of him in Gravenberch but now he has nobody at times and you may have players who don’t need to comit to tackles.
‘The physical side of it has gone out of the window, so for me Liverpool need to return to basics and forget concerning the egos because that could be a big problem for me straight away.’
Slot opted not to carry a press conference to preview Wednesday’s cup tie against Palace, with club’s not contractually obliged to have one before Carabao Cup matches.
The Dutchman decided to do the identical thing prior to last month’s third-round win against Southampton.
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