Jurgen Klopp has compared Liverpool’s struggling start to the season with the centre-back crisis that hampered their defence of the Premier League title.
The Reds are already 11 points off early leaders Arsenal – albeit with a game in hand – having won only two of their first seven league matches, matching their worst such start in a decade.
Klopp’s side have been almost unrecognisable to the team that came close to an unprecedented quadruple last campaign.
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And the Reds boss believes the challenge now facing his players is not dissimilar from the one they had to overcome when their championship defence in 2020/21 was decimated by a succession of injuries.
“I don’t want to talk too much about it but it is only two years ago we had a very similar situation for different reasons where we lost all our centre-halves and we had to find solutions,” said Klopp.
“We lost our game completely, nobody could recognise us any more. We wore the same shirts but couldn't react as quick as people would wish but we found a way out because we worked on it and this is what we will do this time.
“Patience is not 100% the right word but we have to be patient to do the right thing again, and again and again until it works out again and then we will be fine. On a different level but fine.
“We cannot always start something completely new but if we can help the boys with a way to defend differently we will do that.”
The relentless schedule which continues with Tuesday’s Champions League group stage visit of Scottish side Rangers has given Klopp and his coaching staff little scope to change matters on the training pitch, while any momentum from the home win over Ajax last month was lost by postponements and the international break.
“No, we don’t have the time... yes, we can improve,” he said. “We can play exactly the same and do better, that is already a fix. If we can do something we will do that as well to make it easier for the boys.
“Could it be improved quicker? Not sure. We had this wonderful conversation already this year after Napoli when we all realised 'Wow that is a low point, we have to change things quickly'.
“Then we didn’t play Wolves, played Ajax, didn’t play Chelsea and it meant we couldn’t pick anything up and keep it from the Ajax game and then on top of that we faced Brighton in a very good moment, a very good team with a new manager and we concede these two early goals.
“Always in life when you spot a problem you think about it, think you have a solution and then you expect the solution to be instantly influential, sorted. That in football is never the case. We have to improve, we have to play consistently better, defend better, attack better – pretty much everything.”
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