LIVERPOOL LOOK TO ARREST SLIDE

LIVERPOOL: Their attacking spark has gone. Their opponents seem to have figured them out. Their chances of silverware are reducing by the week.

For Liverpool’s players, there’s concern that a season of high hopes is slipping away from them.

January has been a month to forget for Liverpool, which has plummeted from title contention after earning only one point from a possible nine in the Premier League and then being eliminated from the League Cup at the semi-final stage by Southampton. The Reds have one win in seven games so far in 2017, and that came in an FA Cup replay against a team from fourthtier Plymouth.

Realistically, Liverpool’s only chance to end a five-year wait for a trophy rests with winning the FA Cup. Second-tier strugglers Wolverhampton Wanderers visit Anfield today for a fourth-round match that suddenly has taken increased importance.

A number of factors have combined to make Liverpool look like a shadow of the team that blew opponents away in the first half of the season.

The departure of Sadio Mane to the Africa Cup of Nations with Senegal in early January has deprived Liverpool of its most lively, energetic forward – he might not be back for another two weeks – while another key attacker in Philippe Coutinho is still recovering his match sharpness after returning from a 6½-week injury lay-off.

It has forced Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp to shuffle his attacking personnel, with Roberto Firmino and Adam Lallana playing in various positions across the front four, and the result has been only six goals in seven games from the highest-scoring team in the Premier League.

Meanwhile, rivals are realising that the best way of playing Liverpool and neutralising its prolific strike-force is to sit back, pack the defence and hit on the counterattack. Klopp said after the two-leg loss to Southampton that 70-80 percent of teams are deploying this tactic and that his team must adapt to it.

“It’s the most difficult thing in football,” Klopp said. “We are a good footballing team, that’s why this happens.”

Liverpool’s defence has long been its weakness and is proving susceptible to the counterattack, as shown against Southampton and in the damaging 3-2 loss to Swansea in the league last weekend. – AP