The Athletic FC

Welcome to the Athletic FC podcast with me, Ayo Akimilari.

Liverpool spent 450 million pounds in the summer transfer window, yet this squad still needs major surgery.

So, how did they get their recruitment so wrong?

And is Arna Slot the man to turn this all around?

All right, in with us today. We've got our football correspondent, David Ornstein. We've also

got Tim Spears. And we've also got our Liverpool writer, James Pearce. All right,

gents, I'll talk transfers later on, but I want to start with Liverpool, James. Their

unconvincing 13 game unbeaten run was ended by Bournemouth on Saturday with a 3-2 defeat.

Talk to me about that underwhelming performance.

Yeah, it really was.

Yes, Liverpool got injuries, but so with Bournemouth, I think they'd won one of their previous

14 games. You know, not long ago, they'd lost their best player in Semenio to Manchester City.

And it was alarming because when Liverpool have dropped points during that unbeat and run,

it's tended to be against teams that sit deep and are just set up to frustrate them.

But it was a very open game at

Bournemouth and they made two horrendous errors that enabled Bournemouth to go two nil up and

then they grafted and fought their way back into it. But, you know, the last 10 minutes, they fell to

pieces. You know, Bournemouth could have scored one or two before that, you know, the late

winner from the long throw that Liverpool dealt with, which has been, you know, the late winner from the long throw that Liverpool

dealt with, which has been, you know, their Achilles Hill this season in terms of dealing with set

plays. I think fatigue certainly played a part because, you know, of course, Bournemouth had a full

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