Jamie Carragher has urged Liverpool to sign a new right-back this summer to try and help the struggling Trent Alexander-Arnold.
Alexander-Arnold’s defensive frailties have been discussed all season and were amplified on Wednesday in Liverpool’s 1-0 defeat to Real Madrid, in which he was dribbled past six times. Only Marco Verratti has been dribbled past more in a single game this season, losing eight duels in PSG’s defeat to Bayern Munich.
The right-back was guilty of ball-watching as Vinicius Junior set up Karim Benzema’s winning goal on the evening, after which Carragher urged both Liverpool and Alexander-Arnold himself to take a closer look at what is going on.
“The problem they’ve got in that position is they’ve never really had real competition for Trent Alexander-Arnold,” Carragher explained on CBS Sports. “One of the reasons why is because he’s been so good.
“So you think ‘well who do you buy? How much do you spend?’ for someone who isn’t really going to play every week.
“But I think Liverpool are at the point now where they’ve got to go and buy a right-back. That’s Jurgen Klopp’s decision in terms of how good that right-back is, how much he costs. But that lad needs serious competition because he’s been playing now for five years at the top level, week in week out, with no rest.
“He’s won everything, he’s done absolutely fantastic, he’s won more than I could ever dream of and I’m so proud of him, a local lad coming through the ranks, but he needs help. He needs to have a long think at the end of the season about where he is as a right-back.”
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Carragher, a former right-back himself, later admitted that Alexander-Arnold’s defending is ‘not good enough’.
“I’ve always defended him in that he’s played for one of the best teams in the world which means you do a lot more attacking than you do defending,” he continued. “We all know his defending isn’t good enough – and I don’t think it will ever be good enough. We’re talking about a player who’s played 260 games – it is not going to massively improve now.
“When Liverpool drop off and aren’t one of the best teams in Europe, like they have been for the last few years, now they’re one of the pack going for the Champions League. Then you’re doing more defending, less attacking.
“You see the worst traits of Trent and not his strengths going forward and that’s a massive problem. I thought this problem would rear its head when Klopp left and maybe Liverpool drop back to when I was a player when most seasons…
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