Gary Neville takes aim at Liverpool forward after Manchester City defeat

Gary Neville takes aim at Liverpool forward after Manchester City defeat Bradley Barcola Must Start Running at Defenders After Liverpool’s 3-0 Loss to Manchester City Liverpool were beaten 3-0 by Manchester City and there was no hiding place for the forwards. With Alexander Isak, Cody Gakpo and Dominik Szoboszlai unavailable, the door was open for Bradley Barcola to take responsibility. He did not. Neither did Florian Wirtz. That is the simple truth. Barcola arrived for £123m with a clear brief. Liverpool wanted pace, directness and a winger prepared to attack defenders repeatedly. Against City, and specifically against Matheus Nunes at full-back, the matchup was there for him. It should have been one of those afternoons where a wide player smells weakness and keeps going after it. Instead, Barcola played within himself. That is the concern. Bad games happen. Quiet spells happen. What matters is the nature of the performance. Barcola did not just misfire in the final third, he passed up the very duel he was picked to win. Barcola failed to exploit Matheus Nunes The criticism from the punditry was straightforward and fair. “Just looking at Barcola today, particularly in that first half when he was down here obviously against Nunes and there’s a couple of times and I think in a top game, a big game as a right back you’re likely to be run at probably two or three times a half in a big game because if you getting run at more than that you’re usually getting a bit of a doing. So ordinarily, you’re going to have a couple of moments whereby you’re facing your winger and you have to win,” Neville explained on Sky Sports. Then came the key point. “He really did turn down and reject the one-on-one duel that he directly had against Nunes. He sort of wasn’t positive and didn’t have that belief and I don’t know where that comes from really from Barcola, because you think about the way in which he plays for France, you know, in the World Cup and he gets the ball off PSG and he’s just so direct, he’s rapid and you think right, okay, go straight at Nunes.” That is exactly it. Nunes is not a natural full-back. You isolate him, you test him, you force him to defend facing his own goal. Barcola had the platform to do that and declined it too often. Wingers lose the ball. They get tackled. They overrun it. None of that matters if they keep asking questions. The real issue is when they stop asking them. Florian Wirtz and Barcola need more output Wirtz has taken plenty of heat in recent weeks and some of it is deserved. He has talent, but talent without impact quickly becomes a talking point. Barcola is drifting into the same territory. There is a difference between looking busy and changing a match. Liverpool need the second part. “It doesn’t matter who it is, it could be the best right back in the world he’s playing against, by the way, but certainly when you’re playing against Manchester City, and you get that one or two moments, I don’t know why he rejected the one-on-one and going directly at Nunes and driving him back into the box and just trying to give him a little bit of a problem. “That that would just concern me and that can’t continue,” added the former Man United defender. “He’s got to make sure he comes out of that. I have to say, Giggsy [Ryan Giggs] used to say this to me. He said, ‘I’ll run at you literally 55, 60 times in training, you’ll take it off me 53, 54 times. But the one time I go, I’ll score.’ And that’s it. You’re done. Your session’s ruined. And that’s the mentality of a winger that will go at someone 10 times in a game, and you might take it off them nine times, but the one time you go past them, you’re done and you’ve had a bad game as a fullback.” This is not complicated. Elite wide players keep going. They accept failure as part of the job. If Barcola wants to justify the fee and the expectation, he has to be more ruthless in those moments. LASK game offers Barcola immediate chance to respond “I just didn’t feel like Barcola had that in the game today, and I’m surprised because I would have thought that his youth, his energy, his exuberance, his talent would have just really given him the ability to go and do that, and I don’t know why he didn’t have that today. That was the one surprise for me. “He can correct that very quickly. He’s got games in midweek, but don’t let that drift into two games, three games, four games, eight games. He’s got to correct it. He’s got to be really direct and keep the confidence of going at defenders one-on-one.” That is where this stands now. One poor match can be noise. A pattern is something else. Liverpool face LASK next and the standard is obvious. Barcola has to get back to basics, receive the ball, square up his full-back and attack him. Keep doing it until the defender cracks or the game changes. That is why he was signed. Right now, Liverpool are still waiting for the meaningful contribution that proves it.