Tuesday 30 July 2019 06:18, UK
Liverpool's pre-season performances have left a lot to be desired. Does manager Jurgen Klopp need to be worried?
Liverpool were beaten 3-0 by Napoli at Murrayfield on Sunday, which extended their winless pre-season run to four games leading Jurgen Klopp to call the seven days before their Community Shield clash with Manchester City "the most important week of our season".
While the focus of pre-season is on fitness and tactics, this summer has been an understandable struggle for Liverpool in terms of results. Any side would find it difficult to replace any one of Mo Salah, Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino in their line-up - but Liverpool have been without all three players after international duty over the summer.
And pre-season is never the best judge of form either - Manchester City lost two of their three friendlies last summer and it didn't serve them too badly across the Premier League season.
But could the Champions League winners be in for a rough ride on the back of their less than ideal preparations?
What has gone wrong for Liverpool?
Since beating Bradford 3-1 on July 14, Liverpool's three-game tour of the USA brought defeats to Borussia Dortmund and 10-man Sevilla as well as a draw with Sporting they barely deserved, followed up with that Napoli loss back on home soil.
Scoring four times in as many games is no huge surprise given their absentees, with Georginio Wijnaldum even drafted in as a makeshift Mane replacement as Xherdan Shaqiri is also out injured.
But it has been the defence which has been surprisingly below-par over the past fortnight, shipping nine goals in four games with Trent Alexander-Arnold and even Virgil Van Dijk surprisingly culpable.
They were at sixes and sevens as Lorenzo Insigne waltzed through the defence with routine ease on Murrayfield on Sunday, unrecognisable from the Liverpool side who had conceded 22 goals across the whole league season in 2018/19.
The intensity of Klopp's game looked especially lost in the Scottish capital as Liverpool enjoyed plenty of possession but lacked tempo and were caught on the break at Napoli's will. A week earlier against Sevilla it was a similar story, as their 10-man opponents caught them twice on the counter-attack late on - the second time punishing them with a last-minute winner.
Why have they been off the pace?
Jurgen Klopp has a simple answer - Liverpool's season starts earlier than some of their friendly opponents, so the higher intensity training has left them more fatigued ahead of a French training camp this week which the manager will use to refresh his side.
"Napoli started at the same time as we did in pre-season," he said. "But their season doesn't start until August 24, two weeks after us - so it's nice and smooth. They can train over the whole period, we have four weeks and have to be ready. I cannot change it.
"We had to do intense sessions in the first three weeks. We played the games in different circumstances. It's always been clear Evian would be the most important week of the season, and we have five days after City before Norwich."
Does their form matter?
It will be impossible to quantify what impact these pre-season results will have, if any, on Liverpool until their Premier League opener with Norwich on August 9, live on Sky Sports.
Even the Community Shield on Sunday is, in effect, a non-competitive game, and if they go on to comprehensively beat Norwich the following week, everything will be forgotten.
As mentioned, Man City's results ahead of their domestic treble last season would have made equally concerning reading for Pep Guardiola and the club's fans, before their blistering run once the season got underway showed pre-season is only as important as you make it.
However, even Klopp himself admitted he had wanted to see his side in better form, saying: "Good results in the pre-season help to build confidence but that's not the most important thing.
"The most important thing is that you build the physical skills for a long, long season because we have to, pretty much, prepare only for the games. There's not a lot of time to train."
