Liverpool enter wobble territory as Chelsea peak behind full-backs


Three defeats in four games for Jurgen Klopp’s side hint at a vulnerability to be found on the flanks

Enter: the wobble. On a chilly, slightly wild night at Stamford Bridge Chelsea progressed to the quarter-finals of the FA cup at the expense of the team previously known as Jürgen Klopp’s Irresistible Red Machine.

Sport loves a premature note of crisis. Perhaps one or two will now be offered, although Klopp has probably earned a little breathing space before the cleaver is unsheathed. Liverpool played well in patches and might have wrenched the game their way with better finishing. But there was something else here too, a sense of a pattern emerging. Even, whisper it, of some more systemic vulnerability being winkled out.

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