Jamie Carragher has criticised the defending by Trent Alexander-Arnold in Liverpool’s defeat to Real Madrid.
The Reds suffered a 3-1 loss to the Los Blancos in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final on Tuesday night.
Defeat in the Spanish capital leaves a rather uphill task of overturning a two-goal deficit at Anfield when the two teams reunite next week.
Alexander-Arnold’s misplaced header led to Marco Asensio scoring Madrid’s second goal, and there were a number of occasions where the Liverpool full-back was caught out in defensive situations.
Carragher was very vocally supportive of Alexander-Arnold on Monday Night Football when the topic of his defending came up in a debate about England right-backs.
Now Carragher has gone against his previous praise of Alexander-Arnold, and has criticised his defensive attitude.
“He’s in position, he is one v one defending,” Carragher told CBS Sports, as he demonstrated with fellow presenter Alex Scott. “He comes out (to close down the attacker) and there’s no bend in the leg.
“So, basically when you go out there (and you’re low with a bend in your leg), you are low and you try and go past me then I can push off.
“I can push forward. I can go this way (left) and I can go that way (right). And you defend properly. I always see him stood like that (up straight). You cannot change direction.
“So, he doesn’t have that intensity in his legs and the focus to defend. This guy is not going to go past me. It’s like he feels like defending is not his job. [That he] should be on the ball.”
Carragher continued: "I can understand when people say he's out of position because he's going forward.
"But when you're there that's got nothing to do with 'I'm an attacking full-back, I don't have to do this'.
"He's not out of position, he's in position - now he's got to defend, and he's got to make it difficult against top wingers at this level."
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