Former Newcastle United and England star Alan Shearer laid into the performance of Joel Matip as Liverpool were comfortably beaten 3-0 by Wolves yesterday.
The Reds’ misery continued with a poor performance at Molineux, with Matip putting the ball into his own net early on and generally struggling to deal with the Wolves attack.
Liverpool are now on a run of just one win from seven games in all competitions, and have bigger challenges coming up with fixtures against Everton, Newcastle and Real Madrid.
Matip is far from the only one to blame, with stars like Mohamed Salah, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Jordan Henderson also all looking a long way from what they used to be, but Shearer singled out the former Cameroon international for a particularly poor performance yesterday.
Speaking on Match of the Day, the pundit said: “You have time to pick your pass, no pressure on the ball, it’s too easy. Gomez is out of position. Look at Matip, you have time to pick your pass and put it in behind. Matip stops. I mean, he is on his way over there to close them and he stops. I don’t know what he’s doing. He had a nightmare.
“Then, all of a sudden (the ball is in the back of the net for the opening goal) and it’s a little bit unlucky with that (the ball hitting him and going in). But again, one simple pass out. They have gone past the three midfielders. You are in the back four, into the final third, causing them problems.
“This is the second goal, ball in. No closing down. Why doesn’t Robertson close them down?! Which he should do. Why doesn’t Keita close them down?! Then, you can take a touch and put the ball in the middle and you get punished. 2-0 down after 11 or 12 minutes.
“Matip, again. Not acceptable. Not good enough. That should be in the back of the net (Nunes’ one-v-one chance) – when the ball goes through (for Wolves’ third), the reaction or lack of reaction from Thiago when he’s chasing Neves. He can see Neves, but he doesn’t even try to stop him. It’s a brilliant goal from Wolves.”
Liverpool surely need to make changes all over their squad in the summer, but defence could be a good place to start as Matip and Virgil van Dijk have shown signs of their age this season after years of being such a solid partnership.