Arsenal’s transfer was a game changer and what Liverpool have just done is incredible

Monday night was absolutely rubbish. It was unbelievable how we lost control of that game and let the victory slip through our fingers.

And I’m not taking anything away from Aston Villa. As poor as we defended, they were sharp up front, they were good. But we gave them too many opportunities.

I think it reflects Liverpool’s season a bit. Towards the end at least. We’ve done so well, coming from where we were at this time last year.

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The boys and management gave us a lot of hope. Too bad it fell flat at the end.

I think sometimes you look at the goal difference, that’s the way the Premier League is now, you can’t even go to Villa and get a draw. He’s crazy. Some of the results we’ve had, you can’t get Man United draws anymore.

That’s exactly the way City have done it now and Arsenal have been brilliant this year. You look at the goal difference of the top three teams, that tells you the story.

If you can’t get the free sheet, which we can’t for love or money – we haven’t had one for over two months – then you won’t win the league. It’s as simple as that.

When we won the league, we had a clean sheet. I’ve had long stretches of successive clean sheets.

But now, we are not right. I scored many goals. Not as many as Arsenal and Man City, but we scored a lot of goals and there should be a lot more. We know that, but it’s a good redemption.

We scored three more goals against Villa and could have scored more. But you score three away goals, you have to win the game.

Even when you score two goals away at Man United, against a poor team, you have to win the game. Against Fulham we had to score four at home to win 4-3.

Top teams, teams that keep winning things, don’t get three goals. They don’t lose two-goal leads.

Defensively, you can’t average more than one game against you if you want to win the league, and we did that. Tell a story.

You have to balance forward and be solid defensively, and we just didn’t do that – especially later in the season.

The last two months, the last 10 weeks, the goals against total tell a story and that’s why it got away from us.

We need a new midfielder – a Declan Rice or a Graeme Souness

The new manager needs to make a difference when it comes to scoring and conceding goals. We have to attack in a way that we are also able to defend ourselves.

Because we are too open, we all know it. I’ve been like this all season. If you can get the right balance there, and the right midfielder, who is a Graeme Souness-type player.

You can’t get a Graeme Souness, that player isn’t there! But who can sit and organize and run the show, then that would make a huge difference to Liverpool in my opinion.

The midfield has already changed completely and that has contributed to that negative change defensively. We had Fabinho, we had Henderson, we had Milner, we had Wijnaldum and co. Now it’s a brand new middle and maybe I feel it and I’m on my feet.

The defensive side of our midfield can be very good. And I really thought Endo was our best player against Villa until he came off. He came in and did really, really well this season.

And we have Bajcetic back, ready for next year. But I think what has changed Arsenal this year is getting Declan Rice for £100m. We need someone there who can defend really, really solidly.

Mac Allister can’t do that. He was asked to do it many times. I don’t want to blame him for Monday night, but he is an attacking midfielder. He can defend but cannot be the holding midfielder. For me, he can’t play there.

I know he had to play there because of injuries and he did well, he did everything he could, but it’s not his attributes. If Liverpool are to win further down the pitch, his attributes are best utilized further up the pitch.

So is Szoboszlai, Gravenberch, Jones and Elliott – all our midfielders are basically attacking midfielders, except for Endo and Bajcetic. Obviously Thiago is leaving and he couldn’t play there anyway.

So it’s a priority for us to get one there. If we get there, we’ve got Bajcetic coming in and you’ve got Endo, who massively strengthens the midfield for next year. You wouldn’t need to buy anything else because Trent can go in there too if the new manager wants to use him as a midfielder.