David James has cited one big ‘fear’ that he has for Liverpool when their season resumes after the international break.
The Reds had won six games in a row prior to the current pause to the campaign, and Arne Slot’s side have nine wins out of 10 in all competitions thus far, leaving them top of the Premier League and on track for an automatic passage to the last 16 of the Champions League.
However, the one blot on their copybook – the home defeat to Nottingham Forest – came in their first match after the September internationals.
James has one big ‘fear’ for Liverpool
Speaking on the BBC’s Premier League Review podcast, James is concerned that the pause in momentum caused by the international break could work against Liverpool, just as it did last month in the form of that setback against the Garibaldi.
The former Reds goalkeeper declared: “I didn’t want to say this publicly, but I have to now, because you’ve drawn me into it. My fear for Liverpool is post international breaks.
“I think we saw that against Nottingham Forest. Simply because what I believe was the pre-season going into the beginning of the Premier League under Slot there, I think the team were just like, ‘This is what we do. This is how we do it: Training, training, training. We do it in the game: Bang, bang, bang. We win games of football’.
“But that first international break, it was 10 days of not having Slot’s training, and then they came back after a couple of days to try and get back into it, and it just didn’t work against Forest.”
No major reason for Liverpool to worry
We can see where James is coming from, but there’s a couple of notable differences to the resumption of Liverpool’s season this month compared to September.
Firstly, whereas the squad had just three matches under Slot when the last international break occurred, they’ve now had 10 games on his watch and will therefore be far more attuned to the intricacies of his tactical setup once they reconvene to prepare for the Chelsea game on 20 October.
Also, with that match being a Sunday 4:30pm kick-off, the players will have an extra day to return to Merseyside and recuperate from their travels compared to the Forest game last month, which was a Saturday 3pm start.
Even those additional 25 hours could make a significant difference in terms of recovery, especially for those travelling back from South America, so theoretically it should be easier for Liverpool to pick up where they left off.
Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the Reds is the standard of opposition they’ll face between now and the end of November – their next four Premier League games are all against teams currently in the top six – but as the current leaders, we’ve no reason to fear anyone at this moment.