Liverpool midfielder Curtis Jones delivered an impassioned review of his boyhood club’s current run of woeful form, capturing the mood of many by lamenting, “We’re in the s---.”
Jones played the full 90 minutes of Wednesday’s 4–1 defeat to PSV Eindhoven, unable to control the torrent of blue shirts streaming on either side of him throughout a chastening evening. PSV’s stroll at Anfield was hardly a new development.
This European setback represented Liverpool’s ninth defeat in 12 games, the club’s worst run of form since the days of Winston Churchill’s reign as U.K. prime minister. Arne Slot couldn’t offer any convincing explanations for his team’s dramatic slide. Jones didn’t even try.
“I don’t have the answers,” he sighed to CBS Sports. “Honestly, I don’t. I’m saying that to everybody. It’s just unacceptable. I don’t even have to wait to think about it. I’m past being angry inside. I’m at the point now where I just don’t have the words.
“It’s hard because I’m playing for the team I support. I’m a fan, and I’ve seen this club all my life. In a long, long time, I haven’t experienced a Liverpool team going through a period like this with results like these.
“But at the end of the day, we still have that badge on our chest. And until that badge is gone, we’re always going to fight. We’re going to try and get this team back to where it needs to be, show everyone again what this club is about and why people call it the best team in the world. But right now, we’re in the s--- and it needs to change.”
Liverpool Legends Turn on Players, Rather Than Arne Slot
After bemoaning Mohamed Salah’s silence, Jamie Carragher must have been somewhat encouraged by Jones’s tirade. The Liverpool icon struck a defeated tone in his role as a CBS Sports pundit, although he isn’t pushing for a managerial change. “Liverpool’s not a sacking club,” Carragher warned. “Liverpool, I think, are different from almost every club in European football where the manager is the king. The managers get time.”
The players, however, appear to have run out of time. “You’re watching [Virgil] Van Dijk now, [he’s] not the same player and Mo Salah looks like his legs have gone,” Carragher sighed. Drilling down onto Liverpool’s increasingly erratic captain, the former defender claimed that Van Dijk is now just “a normal centre back, like me.”
Steven Gerrard demanded “a lot of soul searching” on TNT Sports but warded off talk of sacking Slot. “Crisis is a very strong word and disrespectful to some of the players that have delivered for this football club, and for the manager that’s delivered three months ago,” he pointed out.
However, Gerrard did take issue with some of Liverpool’s individuals. “It doesn’t matter if it’s Mo Salah or anyone, you can’t get beat in a dribble in this situation,” the former Liverpool captain moaned when looking at PSV’s second goal. “[Milos] Kerkez to me is out of position for the majority of the game.
“It’s criminal to be on that side of the attacker. You have to be on the inside. He gives himself no chance.”
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Curtis Jones Fires Expletive Four-Word Summary of Liverpool Malaise.
