Dejan Lovren joined an elite group of Premier League footballers last week when he was thoroughly ridiculed after a disastrous 30-minute appearance during Liverpool’s 4-1 loss to Tottenham. Lovren can join the likes of Bebe, Fellani and Tom Cleverly who can all attest to the internet’s wrath after a spectacular underperformance.
It wasn’t just the internet that put the boot into Lovren, his manager Jurgen Klopp also undermined the Croatian international claiming post-match “I would have prevented first goal in my trainers.”
However tonight football pundit John Giles has claimed it is Klopp who has to assume the blame for the disastrous defensive performance.
Speaking on Newstalk’s Off the Ball on Thursday night, Giles said:
The manager has to be responsible for that positional sense and the positional way in which they played because Kane got behind Lovren which should never happen.
That was very poor play, no doubt, but I wouldn't blame Lovren completely on that and I think he was told to be in that position from the training ground into the match.
Giles accredits the malfunction to “bad judgement, bad coaching, bad management” and feels the effects of Klopp’s bad coaching are now apparent on the pitch:
Whether he's doing the defensive coaching or not, I don't know but he's the manager so he's responsible for it. But certainly for that [first] goal, it was really bad coaching.
Giles is not the only pundit to feel Liverpool's defensive errors go beyond the players, Eamonn Dunphy told 2fm's Game On yesterday that "Klopp has had two years to put this right and he's made it worse."
