Liverpool have lost balance and confidence. Regaining both is not easy

It’s never just one thing. Football, whatever the cliche may say, is not a simple game. A team is a hugely complex organism: a malfunction in one area can have profound consequences elsewhere. Everything is connected and contingent; nothing is independent. Jürgen Klopp must feel at the moment as though he is engaged in a game of Whac-a-Mole, bashing at problems here and there, and yet also knowing that these moles are related, that a mole in one corner is breeding moles elsewhere.

But let’s begin with the most obvious issue, the great culture war of our time: the Trent Alexander-Arnold Conundrum. Already it’s one of those issues that has become almost impossible to discuss properly, arguments yielding to meta-arguments as everybody rushes to deeply entrenched positions.

Alexander-Arnold is a generational genius and Gareth Southgate should be sent to the Tower for his refusal to select him for England. Alexander-Arnold is a fraud.

Somewhere between the extremes is the reality, and it is surely what Klopp explained, with a sense of exasperation, last week. Alexander-Arnold is a brilliant attacking full-back, one of the best strikers of a ball in the Premier League but defensively, when a forward runs at him, say, or in protecting the back post, he is some way short of the abilities of, for instance, Reece James or Kyle Walker.

Liverpool have got the best out of him by playing to those attacking qualities, encouraging him to spend most of his time in the opposition half, something they can do because of the intensity and precision of their press. When that press goes awry, as it did in 2020-21 and as it has this season, Alexander-Arnold becomes vulnerable to balls played into the space behind him. Klopp could protect