Jamie Carragher says Liverpool have a real Pep Guardiola problem

Jamie Carragher worries Liverpool have a Pep Guardiola problem. It's certainly costing them right now.

We’re 18 months into the Arne Slot era and has it been a success? Yes, overwhelmingly so - he won the Premier League, after all.

But the second season certainly hasn’t been as good as the first. A long way off it, in fact, as Liverpool have been through their worst period of form since the 1950s.

And even outside of that, they’re struggling badly. Five wins in the Premier League since September, zero since December 27th, and if it weren’t for a series of late winners to kick-off the campaign, Liverpool would be some way off the race for UEFA Champions League football.

So what’s changed? Everyone has an opinion on that, especially after Liverpool overhauled their squad in the summer.

But Jamie Carragher feels there may be something else at play here. Something a little too Pep Guardiola.

From Jurgen Klopp to Pep Guardiola

Carragher spoke to the Athletic about Liverpool's current situation and he feels that the club may have stepped away from what made them successful. Jurgen Klopp and Guardiola are at the heart of that switch.

“There’s no doubt Arne Slot’s hero in management is Pep Guardiola. He raves about him," said Carragher. "The lovely balance between Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola football was what we saw last season in Liverpool winning the title. Now it looks like it’s gone too far the other way.

“In some ways, it reminds me a little bit of Roberto Martinez going to Everton. In his first season, he sprinkled a little bit of Roberto Martinez stardust onto a David Moyes team, which was very solid and powerful.

"Then the next season we saw a little bit more, and they came away from that lovely mix. They just fell away from where they wanted to be. And it looks like that’s also happening at Liverpool.”

There certainly is something to that. Liverpool aren't as aggressive as they were under Klopp, at least, not in their mentality.

And no one can deny that the balance of last season was what won the league. Slot came in and injected some new ideas into the squad, reaping the rewards over the first half of his debut campaign.

But the further we've gotten since the Klopp era, the worse this team has looked. That started last season and has continued into this one - and that's a bigger problem.

Because Liverpool did hire Slot to play the way he wants to. They didn't hire him to be a blend of his own ideas and Klopp's. They even set about building him a squad this summer for his style of play.

Now, whether they successfully did that is another matter but there's no doubt that things have moved in the wrong direction. Perhaps that's because the style doesn't work, or perhaps it's because Liverpool are in a strange limbo where Slot is trying to change towards his own ideas but lacks the players to do so.

Either way, finding some sort of balance is vital - and the club is currently failing to make it work.

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