Trent Alexander-Arnold is in the firing line once again from some pundits after Liverpool’s victory over Bournemouth at the weekend.
The Reds’ vice-captain was forced off with an injury after 70 minutes, although it’s since been claimed that the issue seems not to be a serious one.
During his time on the pitch, the 26-year-old was caught napping by Antoine Semenyo straight from the kick-off and later made a hash of a headed clearance to present another opportunity to the Cherries.
Nicol blasts ‘woeful’ Trent performance
It wasn’t the finest defensive performance that Trent has given, and he was shown absolutely no mercy by Steve Nicol, who not for the first time lambasted the right-back in that regard.
The Scot said on ESPN FC: “I keep looking at Alexander-Arnold, and honestly, today – that whole propaganda that we were listening to at the start of the season about how his defending is better.
“That’s all it was, propaganda. Again today, he was absolutely woeful. He was so bad and actually I think he would have been taken off had he not picked up a knock, he was that bad defensively.”
Trent has actually shown defensive improvement this season
Admittedly Trent had one of his poorer performances of the season on Saturday – aside from the aforementioned errors, he lost six of his nine duels and was dribbled past four times, and his 23 losses of possession was the most of any Liverpool player on the day (Sofascore).
However, for Nicol to dismiss the narrative of defensive improvement from the 26-year-old as ‘propaganda’ is over the top, and the stats are there to show that the Reds’ vice-captain has actually improved in that respect.
As per FBref, he’s already won almost 50% more tackles this season (38) than last (26), and his tackling success rate has increased from 31% to 46.4%. Also, his rate of errors leading to an opponent’s shot has decreased by 60% from 2023/24.
Looking at statistics from Sofascore, Trent has been dribbled past 1.7 times per match in the current campaign (compared to 2.1 last term) and has yet to make an error leading to the concession of a goal, something which happened twice in Jurgen Klopp’s final season in charge.
Along with Roy Keane, it seems that Nicol can’t wait to stick the boot in whenever the England international has a single defensive lapse. Even though our number 66 was far from at his best on Saturday, some of the criticism that he continues to receive is excessive and borne out of lazy narratives.
