There were no real positives to take from Liverpool's 1-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest this weekend. Alisson Becker couldn't have done much more and Ibrahima Konate and Virgil van Dijk did fine, but the rest of the team was sluggish and struggling.
A lack of movement and creativity in the final third meant that Liverpool was stifled. There was little sharpness when it mattered, Dominik Szoboszlai and Trent Alexander-Arnold couldn't do much right, and even Mohamed Salah looked a shadow of his usual self.
Inevitably after a first defeat at the helm for Arne Slot, It didn't take long for the comparisons to the Jurgen Klopp era to arrive. But that is despite it being clear that a sample size of one game is not enough to make sweeping judgments.
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"I thought Liverpool were a bit boring," Paul Merson said live on Sky Sports News post-match. "I thought it was slow. When you watch Klopp’s team play, they break and it’s 100 miles an hour, they break so quickly."
"They just seemed to go through the phases," he continued. "It isn’t quick enough. And unless they quicken this up, I don’t see it. I don’t see them challenging, I don’t. They have got to move it quickly. Teams in this Premier League , they get back so quickly."
That, though, ignores the fact that Liverpool won each of its first three matches of the campaign without conceding a goal. As much as three games is a small sample, one more match is simply not sufficient proof of what comes next. The tactical plan has not changed since Slot was being lauded for a great showing at Old Trafford.
To suggest that Liverpool cannot be successful by playing the Slot style ignores not only the wins picked up prior to the international break but also the fact that the Dutchman was not instructing his stars to be so lackadaisical. The performance was well below par and it certainly wasn't the plan that was being targeted.
Against Ipswich Town, Brentford and then Manchester United , Liverpool was dominant and controlled but also creative and decisive. Those were three big reasons to be cheerful: it was never about having possession for the sake of it and Liverpool made the most of the chances that came its way on those occasions.
That is what Slot wants from his players; the difference against Nottingham Forest was that there was little purpose or intensity and the Liverpool boss didn't have many options to change things from the bench. In the absence of Harvey Elliott and with Cody Gakpo and Darwin Nunez making no impact, there was no game-changer to perform a late rescue act.
As quickly as Liverpool's form dropped off, though, it could return. It is the job of the Reds now to prove that the performances against Ipswich, Brentford and Manchester United are the norm and this was the exception — and to instantly prove Merson's prediction wrong. That begins with the trip to AC Milan in the first experience of the new-look Champions League before Bournemouth is next up at Anfield in less than a week.
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