Up to this point, Liverpool’s start to the season had been bad in a rusty, frustrating sort of way: a remodelled team clanking through the low gears, missing grace and fluency. This was something else entirely: a wild, tempestuous undoing, the sense of a once-great team caving in on itself, which called to mind Jürgen Klopp’s disastrous final season with Borussia Dortmund. Has the seven-year hitch struck again? It has been hitherto unthinkable, but this was a sensationally, catastrophically, operatically bad performance, one whose defining motif was how utterly vulnerable Liverpool were against straightforward passes in behind.
It is strange and startling, the thinness of the line between an elite defence and an inept one. Last season, Liverpool conceded 26 goals in 38 games, the joint-best figure in Europe’s leading leagues. Here they looked like conceding every ten minutes.
What this defeat exposed was just how precarious Liverpool’s defensive construct has been, how many cracks a fortress can conceal. Last season, they suffered the second-most through balls in the Premier League, counting on the pace of Virgil van Dijk and the one-v-one brilliance of Alisson to redeem the fundamental frailty of the high line. Here that fragile covenant broke like a dam rent by deluge.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...-in-naples-raises-serious-questions-gg79vdgzg
