John Aldridge has said that Liverpool need to ‘win the battle’ against teams in the bottom half of the Premier League table if they’re to be genuine title contenders this season.
The Reds are only three points off the lead as it stands but endured the frustration of drawing 1-1 at 17th-placed Luton on Sunday, and it took a stoppage time Luis Diaz equaliser to spare us from defeat.
The result could’ve been much more damaging if Tottenham, Arsenal and Aston Villa hadn’t all lost, but it was nonetheless a big opportunity missed in the context of rivals dropping points and leaders Manchester City cruising to a 6-1 win over Bournemouth.
In his latest column for the Liverpool Echo, Aldridge urged Liverpool to show more fight and be more ruthless against ‘lesser teams’ if they want to end up as champions at the end of the season.
He wrote: “It is this thing again when we go away to the so-called lesser teams and we’re shocking. You’ve simply got to win them, got to get that first goal. To get that first goal it means playing well and approaching the match in the right manner.
“We go to Newcastle, go 1-0 behind, go to all these places and get results. We were unlucky at Tottenham, but playing the lesser sides since last year I don’t know what goes on. All due respect to them, one thing they have got is fight. It is their cup final, playing Liverpool, but we’ve got to overcome it.
“Manchester City will go to Luton and win 4-0, and that’s what we can’t do. They might go to Newcastle and lose, but these lesser teams they beat. They need to start treating them like they are the bigger teams, because we’ve got something in our DNA at the moment that’s stopping us from beating them.
“First of all you have to win the battle. They will battle, they will go through a brick wall, and Liverpool can’t shirk anything – match their battling – and when you do that you rise to the top and get your win. If you can’t battle against these teams, you’re going to struggle to battle for the title.”
Sunday’s struggle at Luton was depressingly reminiscent of so many away matches from last season where Liverpool seemed to be off it from the first whistle and were duly punished by opposition who outfought us – the trips to Fulham, Nottingham Forest, Bournemouth, Brighton and Wolves in 2022/23 spring to mind.
A worrying statistic emerged over the weekend highlighting that the Reds’ last Premier League win away to a promoted club was against Watford in October 2021, which seems incredible to think for a team who nearly won an unprecedented quadruple by the end of that campaign.
Our away record in general needs to improve – our last four top-flight games on the road have yielded only five points – and it’ll take one hell of a performance to emerge victorious from the next such fixture against Man City at the Etihad Stadium later this month.
Any team can slip up against lower-placed opposition in this division – Pep Guardiola’s side lost at Wolves in September – but with Liverpool it’s a core failing which occurs far too often.
After the City game, our away league fixtures in December are against Sheffield United, Crystal Palace and Burnley. With the greatest due respect to those clubs, the Reds absolutely have to take maximum points from each of those trips if they’re to be serious about striving to win the Premier League title in 2024.