Gary Neville Slams ‘Naive’ Liverpool Player After Chelsea Loss – ‘He Looked Like a Kid Out There’
Gary Neville, a veteran of Manchester United, believes that Milos Kerkez “looks like a youth team player” following Liverpool’s 2-1 loss to Chelsea on Saturday.
Early on at Stamford Bridge, a thunderbolt from Moises Caicedo put the Reds behind, but Cody Gakpo levelled on minute sixty-three to give Arne Slot’s team a chance to win.
Estevao, however, slipped in at the back post to score a Marc Cucurella cross in the closing seconds of the second half, giving Chelsea the victory.
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Slot won the Premier League title in his first season as head coach, but Liverpool is having trouble performing at the same levels as they did the previous season.
After the Gunners defeated West Ham 2-0 on Saturday, the Reds, who were five points ahead of Arsenal two games ago, are now in second place in the Premier League standings.
Big summer signings With the club’s summer hiring under scrutiny, Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz are finding it difficult to create much of an impression.
Neville saw Kerkez, the new left-back who cost £40 million to purchase from Bournemouth, as a major problem for Liverpool.
Andy Robertson replaced the Hungary international early in the second half. “To be honest with you, at this point in time, the boy Kerkez looks like a youth team player,” Neville stated on his Sky Sports podcast.
“I am aware that he is a talented player, but he appears to be playing for the Under-21s or minor squad. He appears so innocent—like a baby—out there. With Neto, he’s losing 50-50!
He’s not a foreign import; he has Premier League experience. I expected him to fit in because he has a lot of experience playing at these grounds and has played there before.
“He is playing with Virgil Van Dijk, who is the world’s best centre half. If you want to play in a back four, you want to play with great defenders, and he is doing just that.”
It’s not like he’s playing on the right with Salah in front of him, which is always a little more challenging because you always become a little more exposed. He has people that put in a lot of effort on that side.
“However, I must admit that he has struggled since the first ten minutes of that season-opening match against Bournemouth.”
But Neville pointed out that Conor Bradley and Jeremie Frimpong are having trouble on the right, so Liverpool’s full-back problems aren’t all Kerkez’s fault. “Frimpong doesn’t play like a right-back; he looks like he should be playing as a right winger,”
Neville went on. Conor Bradley simply isn’t performing up to par, and while Andy Robertson is fighting, he’s not nearly at his former level.
“The full-back position is the primary cause of Liverpool’s issues. That must be buttoned down.
Slot said, “Milos was more and more tired – he played 90 minutes in two games and now for the third game in a week, which he’s not used to when he played at Bournemouth,” in response to a question about why he had to substitute Kerkez in the second half.
“We made the decision to make a change over there because we could sense and see that it was getting harder and harder to continue and that their wingers were a threat.”
“Most of the time I have to change the fullbacks after being on yellow,” Slot continued in reference to Bradley’s substitution at halftime. Today Conor Bradley got on a yellow card.”
You question if it’s wise to keep him on the pitch after he committed a second foul and players started requesting a yellow again. We needed Florian to enter the game, so we chose not to.
