Wolves 3 Liverpool 0: Reds suffer huge blow to top four hopes as they’re torn apart by rejuvenated Wolves
JURGEN KLOPP must have felt such a fool sporting the armband denoting football’s green weekend as his team was left utterly humiliated.
The climate change initiative spread across the English game is all about the sustainability of the planet with every player and boss wearing backing it.
Yet sustainability is exactly what his team can no longer count on.
And Klopp’s world looks lie it is coming the end.
Liverpool are running on empty and delivered the shocking, shambolic performance that confirmed there is more than one club now in crisis on Merseyside.
Joel Matip scored a horror own goal, Craig Dawson slammed in a second for Wolves in a nightmare opening eleven minutes that said everything about how far and how fast Klopp’s men have fallen.
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Remember, they were two games away from completing an historic quadruple last season – the team Klopp proudly called his “mentality monsters.”
Now so many of the same players – and especially those supposed to be guarding the back door – are not even going through the motions.
The German declared after last month’s 3 – 0 Prem defeat at Brighton that it was the lowest point of a managerial career that now stretches 1,002 games.
Yet this was worse, so bad that he stood transfixed on the Molineux touchline unable to comprehend the utter inadequacy of his team’s defending.
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The displays of Matip, of Joe Gomez, Andy Robertson and Trent Alexander-Arnold, as well as those in front of them supposed to be closing down opponents were a betrayal of all that Klopp stands for tactically.
Geggenpressing ? This was simply depressing for the German.
Liverpool have now conceded more Prem goals – 28 in 20 games - than they did throughout the whole of last season.
True enough £75M defensive kingpin Virgil van Dijk is missing with hamstring problems and Ibrahima Konate has joined him having suffered the same injury.
Yet Matip and Gomez have been there all the way through the good times.
Now the going has become tough, but they are not getting going.
The Anfield edifice is crumbling before our very eyes and Klopp’s opposite number Julen Lopetegui will not have believed what he was seeing.
Only five minutes in Robertson slacked up instead of speeding up to close down Nelson Semedo who drilled the ball forward for Hwang Hee-chan.
Matip was slow to react to the mistake able only to find himself in the wrong place at the wrong time as Hee-chan swung from a narrow angle, the ball skidding into the net off the beleaguered defender.
Robertson again didn’t know whether to stick or twist on his left flank as Matheus Da Cunha delivered for Max Kilman to shoot.
Gomez’s header was weak, hitting Stefan Bajcetic on the penalty spot and Dawson, making his debut following a £3.3M entrance from West Ham blasted a right footer high into the net.
To think that Wolves had only scored six Prem goals at home this season.
Suddenly, before the Bovril had gone cold, they had the double that sent Liverpool into an even deeper downward spiral – that’s only one point from their last four games.
Last season’s domestic cup double and that incredible surge towards greatness is only a memory now.
While Klopp’s players have completely forgotten how to play.
Indeed they could easily have been three down by the 26 minute as Matip, who had seemed in a daze from the start, was ambushed 30 yards out by Matheus Nunes, Alisson then doing a brilliant one on one job.
Few of the goalkeeper’s team mates showed such defiance with Cody Gakpo a near by – stander, Darwin Nunez flattering to deceive as he does, Mo Salah all but isolated.
Here seemed a decent shout for a penalty when Naby Keita’s short deflected onto Kilman’s arm but neither referee Paul Tierney nor VAR Lee Mason were interested.
The coup de grace for a Liverpool team that has lost all identity as triple Champions League finalists with one triump, 2020 Prem champs and last year’s trophy double came in the 72nd minute.
Gomez, as Matip had been mid-way through the first half was caught in possession, sub Joao Moutinho robbing him.
The midfielder sent over a cross-field pass to fellow sub Adama Traore, Robertson stranded.
The winger clipped back across to Ruben Neves who had run thirty yards forward to meet the pass.
He sprinted past Thiago like he wasn’t there and the Spanish star certainly didn’t even see him as the Wolves skipper steadied himself to leave poor Alisson for dead.
That goal summed up everything that has gone wrong within Anfield while it was met by the thunderous reception of Old Gold fans who know are beginning to believe they are onto a good thing with new boss Lupetegui.
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Bruno Lage’s successor now has ten points from his six Prem games in charge with Wolves not only out of the drop zone but now looking up, not down.
The opposite is the case for Klopp and a team that now have a new mentality – as losers.