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LONDON. — If football really was the simple game of cliche, it would be easy for Liverpool to identify a single issue, work out a solution and put it right. 

This, after all, is the team that have, for five years, been consistently the second-best side in England. Yet, after a shambolic defeat 3-1 at Brentford on Monday night, they lie 15 points behind the leaders, Arsenal, and, more pertinently, four points off Manchester United in fourth, having played a game more. What must be most troubling is the sense of plates across the stage stopping spinning as Jürgen Klopp dashes frantically between them. 

Klopp, addressing rumoured interest in Enzo Fernández and Moisés Caicedo, had warned that the club are not able to play Monopoly. What has been especially impressive over the past few years is the way Liverpool have achieved that level of consistency without ostentatious spending. 

And that is also why Champions League qualification is so essential; if revenue drops, so too does their capacity to spend and, with the club in significant transition, that could have serious consequences. It doesn’t take much for virtuous circles to become vicious. 

But when fractures come it is in battalions. Everywhere in this Liverpool side, with the exception of Allison, there are doubts and concerns. In one sense, their problems this season have not been difficult to diagnose. The press has not been functioning and that is not something easily rectified. But to that was added a new vulnerability, an almost comical inability to defend corners as though Liverpool were still engaged in a festive game of charades, enthusiastically acting out Wenger-era Arsenal away at Stoke. 

Every Bryan Mbuemo delivery from the right before half-time caused chaos. One trickled in off Ibrahima Konaté and two others led to disallowed goals. Some off-sides are the result of careful planning and well-executed plans; these just happened in the chaos. 

But it wasn’t just set plays. In the buildup to the first Brentford goal it was noticeable how Mbuemo hurtled past Virgil van Dijk, his turning circle so great they also had to move the stand for him, in the move led to the critical corner. Not for the first time this season, the thought occurred that Van Dijk is not quite so physically imposing as he used to be. 

Then for the second, a turnover that came directly from the free-kick for the second effort disallowed for off-side, Liverpool’s marking fell apart again. Konaté, meanwhile, was inexcusably weak as Mbuemo brushed him aside for the third. — The Guardian