Liverpool came out of a pre-season friendly against Leeds with two very different stories to tell. The first half offered sharp moments from Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz. The second half brought a collapse that saw Liverpool concede four goals without reply inside 25 minutes, and that is the part Dominik Szoboszlai picked out after the game.

Liverpool's defensive collapse

Szoboszlai was blunt about what went wrong. Speaking to the BBC, he said: "We conceded two goals from set-pieces. We have to fix that and make sure we deal with them better". He was not dressing it up, and he did not need to. Two of the goals came from set-pieces, and Liverpool's problems were concentrated in one ugly 25-minute spell after the break.

Ryan Gravenberch was part of the side that was supposed to control the middle of the pitch, but once the tempo went, the game got away from Liverpool quickly. The friendly nature of the fixture matters less than the pattern it exposed, because set-piece defending and second-half concentration are exactly the kind of issues that tend to follow a team into more serious matches.

Isak and Wirtz give Liverpool something to build on

The brighter note came before the collapse. Ifeanyi Ndukwe had already put Liverpool ahead in the 7th minute from a Szoboszlai corner, and Wirtz added another in the 40th minute after a move involving Isak and Trey Nyoni. That was the clearest glimpse of what Liverpool want once the new pieces settle together: quick combinations, more quality in the final third, and enough variety to hurt teams in different ways.

The combined cost of Isak and Wirtz was listed as £225m, so the expectation around them will stay high. Wirtz's goal and Isak's involvement did not erase the defensive mess that followed, but they did show why Liverpool have invested so heavily in the front end. The attack looked ready to give them something. The back line did not give them much protection at all.

A fortnight in America passed without any incomings, so the squad still looks unfinished in places. That leaves Andoni Iraola with a straightforward job after this one: keep the attacking upside, fix the set-piece problems, and make sure a 25-minute collapse does not become the defining image of the tour.

Written by Jack Mercer with AI-assisted research, cross-checked against 2 outlets. How we work →