‘Miles off it’ – Chris Sutton says four Liverpool players have ‘dropped significantly’ this season

Chris Sutton has singled out four Liverpool players who he believes have declined ‘significantly’ from the levels they consistently reached last season.

The Reds’ Premier League title triumph in Arne Slot’s maiden campaign was built upon an outstanding spine throughout the team, from Alisson Becker between the sticks and the imperious centre-back duo of Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konate, to a top-class midfield partnership of Ryan Gravenberch and Alexis Mac Allister and a phenomenal Mo Salah in attack.

Alas, despite a summer trolley dash to the tune of £446m, the champions have regressed massively since then, dropping to sixth in the table and left scrapping to merely qualify for next season’s Champions League.

Sutton names Liverpool quartet who’ve ‘dropped significantly’

Speaking on The Monday Night Club, Sutton picked out four Liverpool players who’ve disappointed him since the start of the current campaign.

He said: “Mo Salah looks like he has put his boots on the wrong feet this season. He’s miles off it. You then look at Van Dijk, his levels have dropped, and you’re talking about two stars whose levels haven’t just dropped but dropped significantly.

“Even players like Gravenberch, who was phenomenal last season, is not at the level. Mac Allister has been a disappointment. It seems like [Dominik] Szoboszlai on his own and that’s the issue.”

Liverpool as a whole have declined, including those Sutton named

Liverpool’s rapid decline from 2024/25 is a collective issue and can’t be pinned on a cross-section of players, but it’d be fair to claim that the quartet who Sutton named haven’t hit the heights of last term.

This time 12 months ago, Salah’s goal tally for the season stood at a whopping 23. His return for the current campaign so far? Five goals. Even allowing for his absence due to the Africa Cup of Nations, that’s an alarming decrease in output.

Van Dijk was imperious last term but has been culpable of some costly mistakes in recent months. He’s already had more errors leading to opposition goals than in all of 2024/25, and was caught badly napping for Bournemouth’s opener in our defeat on the south coast last weekend.

Gravenberch and Mac Allister were formidable in our Premier League title triumph but haved looked somewhat jaded this season, the Argentine especially. The manner in which the Cherries cut through our midfield on Saturday would’ve been unthinkable this time last year, given the form those two had been in.

All four of those have regressed this term, but the team as a whole have dropped off massively. Obviously the tragic events of last July have had an unquantifiable impact on this group of players, but the harsh reality is that Liverpool ought to be doing so much better with the quality they possess.

The increasingly plausible possibility of missing out on Champions League football will hopefully give the team a jolt and prompt a notable collective upturn in form for the rest of this campaign.

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