Trent Alexander-Arnold admits Liverpool have ‘fallen into a trap’ of expecting to win

Trent Alexander-Arnold admits that Liverpool have taken liberties and fallen into the trap of expecting to win games, with their Premier League title defence up in smoke following four defeats on the trot. 

Jurgen Klopp’s champions have now not won a league match since defeating West Ham at the end of last month and suffered an ignominious defeat on their home patch to rivals Everton for the first time in 22 years at the weekend.

Liverpool had been one of the favourites again to win the title after their stunning season last term, but find themselves 19 points behind leaders Manchester City and languishing in sixth place.

Liverpool are down in sixth after a horror run of four straight defeats in the Premier League

Klopp has already conceded that their title defence is over and Alexander-Arnold admitted that Liverpool have been guilty of being too overconfident in matches this campaign.

‘The trap we have probably fallen into this season is that we’ve almost expected to win games on some occasions because we know we have the quality to find that goal from somewhere,’ he told the club’s official matchday programme. 

‘That happened naturally last season and the season before. But, breaking it down, it didn’t just happen because we were lucky – it happened because we were still working hard, we were doing the basics and the fundamentals right until the very last minute and that really worked in our favour.

‘The fact that we were still doing those things meant that we would still create the right opportunities and we wouldn’t be forcing passes, but we’d still stick to our way and would create something we could score from.

‘I think this season we’ve maybe forgotten a few of those fundamentals and we’ve kind of just expected to do that because it became so natural for us.’

Everton compounded Liverpool’s woes by winning at Anfield for first time since 1999 

Alexander-Arnold said he’s not been his best but is concentrating on the team’s improvement

Alexander-Arnold also admitted that he has fallen short of his usual lofty standards this season.

‘This has been something of a spell of bad form that I haven’t really had before,’ he added. ‘It’s always been quite good in the past, so this is new.

‘But the individual side doesn’t matter as much to me as winning games. You have 38 games in a season so there are still many more to come.’

Liverpool will look to arrest their slide of four consecutive Premier League defeats when they travel to stragglers Sheffield United on Sunday.