‘Really poor’: Jamie Carragher blasts £20m Liverpool star

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Dejan Lovren is coming under fire for his performance for Liverpool on Saturday.

Jamie Carragher has described Dejan Lovren’s performance for Liverpool on Saturday as a ‘really poor’ one.

The Reds lost their 44-game undefeated streak in the Premier League by losing 3-0 away to Watford in what is arguably the shock result of the season so far.

In doing so, Liverpool also surrendered their chances of emulating Arsenal from 2004 by going through the entire league campaign without losing.

Jurgen Klopp had to pick between Lovren and Joel Matip to partner Virgil van Dijk in central defence, and he chose the Croat.

But Lovren, a £20 million signing in 2014 [The Telegraph], didn’t cover himself in glory and was arguably culpable for at least one goal that Liverpool conceded in Hertfordshire.

The German manager paired Matip and Van Dijk during the second half of last season – including in the Champions League final win over Tottenham last June – and the club’s legendary defender Carragher has told Sky Sports that he doesn’t know why Klopp overlooked the Cameroon international for Lovren.

He said: “I mean, the decision of the manager playing Lovren, I think everyone felt before the game that was a strange one. ‘He didn’t perform great. You never want to pick individuals out but it was a really poor performance from him, alongside the normally fantastic Virgil van Dijk who wasn’t himself also.”

As Carragher mentioned, Van Dijk was also a tad suspect and it would be unfair to blame Lovren for the defeat in its entirety.

The truth is, this was coming for Liverpool; maybe not a 3-0 thumping by a relegation-threatened side, but defeat was on the agenda and they used another Get Out of Jail card less than a week ago in the 3-2 win over West Ham, a game that the former Southampton star didn’t play.

With a 22-point cushion at the Premier League summit, it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things that Klopp’s side lost yesterday, but it does matter that they regroup and focus on Chelsea in next week’s FA Cup tie.