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Ex-Liverpool and Aston Villa defender Stephen Warnock has said ahead of the meeting between his former sides at Anfield on Saturday that he wants to see Arne Slot deploy Joe Gomez at right-back.
The Reds have struggled defensively for several months and have kept just two clean sheets in the last 20 matches. Liverpool has also conceded multiple goals in each of its last five Premier League outings.
Individual performances have been under the spotlight, with Ibrahima Konate’s early-season displays criticized, while Virgil van Dijk’s underwhelming showings have drawn stinging remarks from pundits of late. Milos Kerkez has also struggled since his summer arrival from Bournemouth, and right-back has been a recurring issue, with Dominik Szoboszlai regularly filling in.
Warnock, a former Liverpool full-back, wants to see Joe Gomez given a chance to start in the side.
“That’s the difficult thing. If you’re going to go with your best XI, obviously, Alisson would be in goal. I’d go with Robertson at left-back; Van Dijk, Konate,” the 43-year-old told LiverpoolWorld.
“At the moment, if you want to solidify things and make things difficult, I’d play Joe Gomez at right-back just to make them strong defensively and maybe not as much as an attacking team.”
Gomez has started just two games this season, both of which have come in the Carabao Cup. The versatile defender has yet to start a Premier League match in 2025, and his longest league outing this season was the 18 minutes he played against Bournemouth on the opening weekend.
Slot’s desire to play an expansive and free-flowing style has often come at the detriment of the defense, with the back four over-exposed.
The Liverpool head coach was asked ahead of the Villa game whether he would consider playing Gomez at right-back and taking a more defensive approach, to which he replied: “It goes against my beliefs, but I have won games in the past.
“Man City away [last season] maybe went against my beliefs but it was necessary to play it like that in the second half, so I would be more than open to adapt in certain situations.
“But I don’t think the story is, at least in my opinion, that we concede chance after chance after chance and are too open, it is absolutely not like this. Every game, except apart from Palace in the first half when we could have been two or three nil down and maybe Brentford, I thought we deserved more than we got and we hardly conceded a chance.
“Even this week, the team I put out which has hardly played together we hardly put out together we only conceded three big chances but they all went in.
“I don't see us conceding chances so I don’t see a reason to change our playing style completely, but we need to do better.”
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