The stats they flashed up last night on TAA suggest it wasn’t even that much of a rut, he’s been the most creative player for Liverpool this season. Obviously that’s a relative assessment but the relative assessment is important; he’s doing significantly worse because his team mates are providing significantly worse support.
In most games he still makes passes only a handful in the league can. I’m surprised how easily that’s overlooked. Even if last season was a dramatic over performance, those core skills can’t be fluked.
It's a weird season to assess. For the first third, we were unlucky on a lot of critical occasions and still top of the league. Robertson was easily the best fullback in the world, Mane still looked good, Salah was more clinical than impressive.
Then the injuries hit, our collective form fell off a cliff, Robertson morphed into the full back version of Stewart Downing and even when TAA came back from covid, he was dreadful in all ways. It was weird - how was he getting caught high up the pitch so often when he wasn't ever near the opposition box either. Like a fullback version of a drunk Jan Molby. And Salah was literally the only player performing at a top level to earn us any points.
At some point during that run, TAA found form and was basically carrying the creative burden singlehandedly in a dreadful team. Then made the headlines a bit later for being dropped by Southgate, then had a few dreadful games after that and has been doing much of the same since.
Taa is the least of our worries to my mind. The fact that he found form at a time when no one else did is promising to me. The question is to what extent we can recover collectively. The dent in collective confidence this team has taken is massive. Have to hope that van dijk, Gomez and Henderson back in will give the team as a whole a lift. Still not sure if Firmino and Mane will ever be the same again though.