Eamon Dunphy believes that Liverpool are a team that are in a ‘major crisis’ and blames their summer transfer spending on their current plight.
Despite finishing runners-up in the Premier League last season after mounting their first serious title challenge in years, Liverpool are in a major slump at the moment, losing their last four games and currently sit a massive 18 points behind leaders Chelsea.
Crystal Palace beat the Reds 3-1 on Sunday, piling further misery on manager Brendan Rodgers and with last season’s top goalscorer Luis Suarez now at Barcelona, Dunphy believes the stiker hasn’t been adequately replaced and their form is suffering as a result.
"It's a crisis for the Brendan Rodgers project. He inherited things that weren't his fault – the £35million they spent on (Andy) Carroll who was a poor player, the £20million they spent on Henderson who’s still there but isn't really top notch," Dunphy told RTÉ Sport.
"He inherited a bad situation and he improved it quite a lot. He did really well with Suarez, controlling him, he managed to keep Suarez controlled and productive. He found a role for [Daniel] Sturridge that no other club had found. He introduced Raheem Sterling to the team and that was a success as well.
"They made progress under Rodgers and it was very impressive in its way. They sold Suarez for £70million, they spent somewhere between £110million and £120million in the summer and it looks like that has been wasted money. That's the problem.
"He had taken the project very rapidly to a good place. Now you lose Suarez, you lose Sturridge to injury and you buy maybe eight or nine pretty poor players."
"It’s a major crisis because even with Sturridge back fit in the new year, it's hard to see how they get back to any kind of decent level."
Dunphy does have sympathy for Rodgers and questioned how much autonomy the manager has on selecting transfer targets at Anfield.
"There's a key element here that has to be addressed before judging Rodgers," Dunphy said. "They have a transfer committee at Liverpool which he sits on but we don’t know who spent that £110million on new players.
"If it wasn’t the coach, and American owners don't give coaches that kind of power necessarily, if he’s not the person that brought those players in then it’s very hard to blame him personally. But they can’t go on they way they are at the moment.
"If you’re in a club where you’re given players who are no good, who are bought for grossly inflated prices then it’s hard to get too heavy on (Rodgers)."
