Paul Tomkins, Andrew Beasley, Daniel Rhodes, Chris Rowland and other TTT regulars will give their thoughts for 24 hours after the game, and we’ll have all the post-match stats too.

Post-Match Thoughts:

Paul Tomkins

I said last week that it reminded me of the way the Reds, after winning 7-0 at Palace, threw away an early 1-0 lead against West Brom in the next game and the slump began, albeit in conjunction with a defensive injury crisis.

Now the Reds have come away from a 5-0 tonking of Man United on their own patch to take just one point from the next six. That’s alarm-bells time, especially as neither performance was good enough. It’s not a crisis, clearly, but conceding five more goals in two league games is highly sloppy, following various other games where goals have been shipped. It’s been horribly ragged, as was the case against Brentford and at times against Man City.

Are these players getting too carried away with themselves? Record-Breaking wins should not be followed by a poor 2-2 draw at home when 2-0 up against a merely decent side, and being so abject against West Ham in the second half.

One of the worst things in football (and in life) is thinking you’ve got it cracked. The big highs in the middle of a season can screw with your mind, which is why on the rare occasions the smaller clubs win the League Cup they seem to implode afterwards, in some cases falling to relegation. You have to keep your hunger and humility. The big highs can be as bad as the big lows, in terms of screwing with your equanimity. This isn’t a slump yet, but obviously slumps have to start somewhere, and hopefully it won’t follow the post-Palace pattern this time.

My issue is that in various Liverpool games, when 2-0 up, the strikers then start to just try and boost their goal tallies. The defending has been poor, but I don’t like this aspect of the Reds’ otherwise supreme attack. A kind of slackness sets in, individualism over team.

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