Scrambling around for positives but the first half was an improvement last night. Under Klopp there's always been a certain profile of side that we don't match up well with tactically, Madrid obviously but we always struggled to play well against Tuchel's Chelsea and Pochettino's Spurs (even though we tended to get results), Napoli are another. Teams not afraid to press us high but also very happy in tight spaces themselves pretty much tend to melt through our entire game plan. I think Atalanta fit that profile and we just couldn't get to grips with them.
The two united games we played well we just couldn't hit a barn door. We've played worse and won. So really the only bad performances in this run have been Palace, which we still had the chances to win, plus being tactically done by a very awkward opponent.
We've also been here many times before in a run in. 18/19 we were hardly playing swashbuckling football by this point, 20/21 the same, we were grinding wins out by the odd goal and getting over the line pretty much on our mental strength and the ability of our forwards to win a game out of nothing. We've played great football in periods but since we became a team who really competed for the biggest honours, performances have often been pretty workmanlike. Whether we win our last six games or not I don't think anyone could expect great performances. We just need to get a lot better at taking our chances again.
Ultimately our forwards are drawing a bit of a blank and there's big decisions to be made, Jota should be first choice IMO and while I've been critical of him Gakpo suddenly looks next in line. I don't think Salah's spot should be automatic and as I've argued on here before I think his days as a winger are numbered. He doesn't have the pace, he can't seem to take anyone on 1 v 1 anymore and our front line hasnt looked as good since he came back from injury, in my opinion. We need to play our form players at the moment if we are going to get ourselves back in contention, which maybe means Diaz completes that front three. Other players have found form by coming off the bench and doing well against tired defences and perhaps it's Mo's turn for that.
It's not over yet. It's not as bad as it feels like. We're still in touch, our two rivals have both had body blows since our last league game and have big tests of their strength coming up too. There's some very small changes that can get us, if not at our swashbuckling best, at least to a point where we can go back to grinding wins out again. We shouldn't give up on a Jürgen Klopp team because they're always capable of surprising you.