Jamie Carragher branded Liverpool’s 1-1 draw with Tottenham a “disaster” and blamed Arne Slott’s underwhelming performance.
Richarlison’s late equalizer handed Tottenham a vital point in the relegation battle, but dealt a huge blow to Liverpool’s hopes of qualifying for the Champions League.
Liverpool are in fifth place, one point ahead of Chelsea and two points behind Aston Villa.
“This is an absolute disaster for Liverpool from a Champions League qualification standpoint,” Carragher said.
“In fact, they made Tottenham look like a decent team.”
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Spurs forward Richarlison scored the equalizer in the 90th minute against Liverpool.
Former Everton striker Richarlison squandered a number of chances until he found the back of the net in front of the Kop in the 90th minute.
“Liverpool’s defense was absolutely shocking. I was half-way saying Liverpool were sleepwalking into this.
“It was a terrible performance. No disrespect to Tottenham, but they are the worst team in the Premier League right now, probably in the last few months. They are exactly the kind of team you want to play against. Playing at home, you want to be inspired by this weekend’s result and perform like that. But it’s been that way all season.”
“And the big question on everyone’s lips is, ‘Is it the coach’s fault or is it the guys on the team?'” Can a new coach fully reinvigorate those types of players and bring that energy and some kind of intensity back to this team? I’m not sure.
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Dominik Szoboszlai put Liverpool ahead with a free-kick, but Jamie Carragher had harsh words for Spurs goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario.
“I think a lot of it goes back to what happened in the summer, the profile of the players that came in. There are too many players who just want to play when the ball is at their feet. They don’t want to dig in and make it difficult. That’s why it’s so easy to play against this Liverpool team.”
Szoboszlai: “We have to wake up or else we have to settle for the conference league”
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Dominik Szoboszlai said Liverpool’s performance level needs to improve after their 1-1 draw with Tottenham in the Premier League, suggesting they would otherwise have to settle for playing in the Conference League next season.
Dominik Szoboszlai says Liverpool should be happy to qualify for the Conference League if they continue to play like they did in the draw with Tottenham.
“We have to wake up. If we keep going like this, we should be happy if we play in the conference league next season,” Szoboszlai told Sky Sports.
“In the first half we played very well. We controlled the whole game and they created very few chances.
“The second half, I don’t know, we just won’t do the same thing as the first half. The question is why? We’re going to sit together. This is the most difficult period. We have to stick together.”
“I didn’t hear any boos (at full time), but it’s understandable because we won the championship last season and this season we haven’t performed as well as we should.
“They should stay behind us because last season, when we were champions four games before the end, everyone was happy. We want them to support us now that we are going through a difficult period.”
Familiar mistakes cost Spurs game
Liverpool head coach Arn Slott has expressed his frustration at the familiar manner in which his side dropped points against Spurs.
He was keen to show some positive aspects to his team’s performance, but ultimately regretted not converting more chances on Sunday.
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Tottenham manager Igor Tudor appears to have mistaken Spurs player liaison officer Alan Dixon for Liverpool head coach Arn Slott ahead of the Premier League match at Anfield.
“Every time it happens, it feels like the biggest blow. When it happened against the Wolves, it felt like the biggest blow of the season, and now it happens again.
“Again in the final moment we had a chance to score ourselves after that, but we couldn’t do it and we left the pitch with a disappointing result.
“The way we concede goals is not always the same in the last minute, so you can’t compare the deflected shot against Wolves to the one we conceded today or the 30-yard shot in the top corner against Fulham. “So the way we concede goals is different, but the same thing is that when we drop points, always or mainly, we concede goals in extra-time or in the last minute like we did today.
“Obviously there were some positive things today.
“If you look at the great goals we scored with Dominic, if you look at the performance of 17-year-old Rio (Ngmoha), if you look at the chances we created…but we always expect more goals than we create because we can never outstrip the amount of chances we have.
“But it’s also perfectly clear that there are parts of our game that we definitely need to improve on, and that’s why we’re in this position, because not everything is perfect, in fact a lot of things aren’t perfect. And as a result, we’re not winning and we’re not scoring as many points as we would like.”
To put Slott’s comments about chance conversions into context, Liverpool have scored 49 times in the Premier League this season, with a total expected goals (xG) figure of 50.01.
In other words, Liverpool performed almost exactly according to xG. 10 teams are underperforming.
In fact, in their last eight Premier League games, Liverpool have scored 16 goals from just 14.3 xG.
Against Spurs, his xG was 1.67 compared to the 1 goal he scored.
