The arrival of Jurgen Klopp was greeted with much expectation and awe, but things don’t seem to be looking bright for the German at the moment.
His first couple of games with the Reds showed great promise as he got the players playing the ‘Klopp way’ quite efficiently as he seemed to have embedded a shred of Borussia Dortmund in Liverpool’s style of play.
But recently wins have been hard to come by for the self proclaimed Normal One, which seems to have left a couple of questions on the Lips of Liverpool fans.
Liverpool traveled a long way to take on Watford at Vicarage Road in Sunday’s lunch time kick off and it was a game that Liverpool were expected to dominate at the very least.
It was quite evident that the three points won’t come easy for the Reds but they were still expected to control the game to some extent, but as the scoreline suggests it was an all Watford affair as Liverpool were second best on the occasion.
Watford extended their winning streak to four in a row to leave themselves just a point away from 4th place while Liverpool dropped down to 10th on the table just behind out-of-form West Ham United.
Watford took the lead at Vicarage Road after only three minutes as Nathan Ake capitalized on Adam Bodgan’s mishandling of the ball to put the home side in front.
Odion Ighalo then netted twice, with a composed finish in the 15th minute before heading his second in the 8th minute as Liverpool was punished for their unimpressive showing in the game.
Watford sat in deep on a number of occasions and they got their best chances through counter attacks and set-pieces. Watford were unlucky not to have won by a higher margin as they created a lot of goalscoring opportunities throughout the course of the game.
Liverpool’s recent dip in form suggests that Premier League clubs have figured out how to outsmart Liverpool’s tactical set-up as Watford most notably let the Liverpool players come at them on a number of occasions which gave way for Watford’s fast counter attacking style spearheaded by the big men up-front Deeney and Ighalo.
West Brom did the same against Liverpool, although the Reds were able to come out of the game with a point but that was not to be the case against Watford as they were outclassed by the Hornets in all departments.
“We lost our minds after the first goal, we lost our compact formation,” Klopp said in his post-match interview. “The reaction has to be better. We came here to do something really different than what you saw. Hopefully it is the most disappointing moment in my whole Liverpool FC life from now on.”
It’s evident Klopp needs to make a few tactical changes to the side ahead of their next game against League leaders Leicester as the Foxes will have it quite easy against Liverpool if they maintain their predictable style of play.
