‘Looks like a youth team player’ - Gary Neville savages £40m Liverpool defender Milos Kerkez after ‘naive’ performance in defeat at Chelsea

Kerkez had a tremendous outing with Bournemouth last season, as the Cherries finished ninth in the Premier League. His impressive performance earned him a place in the PFA Team of the Year and subsequently Liverpool signed him for £40 million ($54m) in the summer transfer window. The Hungarian full-back has featured in all of Liverpool's matches this season, but his performance has been below par. Against Chelsea, he featured in the starting lineup but had to be taken off in the 55th minute.   

Speaking on The Gary Neville Podcast, after the Reds' loss at Stamford Bridge, Neville said: "The boy Kerkez, to be honest with you, at this point in time, he looks like a youth-team player. I know he’s a good player, but he looks like he’s playing for the youth team, or the Under-21s. He looks so naïve; he looks like a baby out there. He’s losing 50-50s with Neto! He’s had Premier League experience; it’s not like he’s come in from another country.  

"He’s got a lot of games under his belt, he’s played at these grounds before, so I expected him to slot in. One, he’s playing alongside Virgil Van Dijk, the best centre half in the world, so if you want to play in a back four, you want to play with great defenders and he is doing. And he’s got players who work hard on that side, it’s not like he’s playing on the right with Salah in front of him, which is always a bit more difficult because you always get a little bit more exposed. But I have to say from the first ten minutes of that game against Bournemouth on the first game of the season, he’s struggled."

Amid all the criticism, Reds boss Slot came to the defender's defence, as he said on Sky Sports: "Milos was more and more tired. He played 90 minutes in two games and now, for the third game in a week, which he’s not used to when he played at Bournemouth. You could feel and see it got more and more difficult to keep going and their wingers are a threat so we decided to make a change over there." 

After new defensive signing Giovanni Leoni picked up an ACL knock last week, Ibrahima Konate is the latest Reds defender to pick up an injury that forced Slot to replace him in the second half against Chelsea.