'I saw Liverpool's most important player become clear and it's causing Arne Slot a huge problem'

Liverpool fell to yet another late defeat, this time against Wolves, with the race for the Champions League spots still wide open as a result of the Reds' inconsistency

Liverpool head coach Arne Slot.(Image: Andrew Kearns - CameraSport via Getty Images)

Another game, another last-minute goal. For Liverpool, it was the same old story.

Arne Slot’s team was way too passive against the Premier League's worst team, and it’s attack was far too meek. Mohamed Salah scored but didn’t do much else, Cody Gakpo was too predictable, and Hugo Ekitike was anonymous after a decent start.

Wolves scored with their first shot in the 78th minute, but Liverpool left that open as a possibility by being so poor. And as the Reds were left with no choice but to admit at the final whistle, they only had themselves to blame despite the unfortunate deflection.

Though it was the second-latest on Opta's records that a team has scored from its first shot of a Premier League match, Liverpool invited such an outcome with the way it played.

"How do I sum us up? Same old story," Arne Slot said. "Recently we are picking up points from scoring from set pieces but what did not change in the past five, six or seven games is we struggle and find it very hard to score from open play chances we do create."

The most glaring issue in the last couple of games has been how much Liverpool has missed the creative hub that is Florian Wirtz.

Away from home, Liverpool has scored just three first-half goals in the Premier League this season. That leaves a familiar pattern: passiveness, then chaos, and then late drama one way or another, with the result often left to a coin toss.

Florian Wirtz of Liverpool.(Image: Lewis Storey/Getty Images)

At the end, Liverpool upped the ante in terms of throwing bodies forward, but had to make it a basketball game to do so. Predictably, with the way things are going at the moment, it was a Wolves break that saw the winning goal scored.

The last time Wirtz played a league game — against Sunderland — things were different. Liverpool was more controlled; everything went through him, and he found pockets of space within which he could work his magic.

Against Brighton, albeit a team that offered more space to work in because of the way it set up, Liverpool was good and progressed in the FA Cup.

Since then, though, Liverpool has been without its key man and it has been overly reliant on set-pieces. Salah and Dominik Szoboszlai's deliveries here were below par, and from open play, there was next to nothing.

Salah and Gakpo, out wide, offered little in the way of the ability to beat a man and though there will be more calls for Rio Ngumoha to get more starts, a 17-year-old cannot be the answer yet.

Ngumoha showed glimpses here, but also why caution needs to be taken.

The bottom line, though, is that Wirtz is the most important man in the Liverpool team at the moment: the creator, and the one who everyone else's instinct is to look for straight away.

The positive? Wirtz isn't believed to be set for a long spell on the sidelines. He should be back for Galatasaray. The negative? He's unlikely to return for the trip to Wolves on Friday, where Slot's side needs to avoid deja vu.