Gary Neville calls Bradley Barcola out for what he did during Liverpool 0-3 Man City, ‘cannot continue’

Bradley Barcola is still searching for his first meaningful contribution in a Liverpool shirt after failing to make an impact against Manchester City on Sunday.

The Frenchman had the chance to put his name in the headlines and really step up for the Reds, who were without Alexander Isak, Cody Gakpo and Dominik Szoboszlai, but both he and Florian Wirtz failed to deliver once again.

While Wirtz has taken most of the blame, as he often does at the moment, Barcola has not escaped criticism either, with Gary Neville baffled by his lack of desire to take on Man City full-back Matheus Nunes on Sunday.

Liverpool decided to pay £123m to secure Barcola’s services because he looked exactly like the kind of fast, direct winger they were crying out for last season. So far though, and in particular against City, the 24-year-old has not delivered on that.

Up against Nunes, who is not a natural full-back, the opportunity was there for Barcola to really put in a statement performance, but having seen him turn down the chance to really attack the City man a couple of times at Anfield, Neville called on the Frenchman to have more belief in his football.

“Just looking at Barcola today, particularly in that first half when he was down here obviously against Nunes and there’s a couple of times and I think in a top game, a big game as a right back you’re likely to be run at probably two or three times a half in a big game because if you getting run at more than that you’re usually getting a bit of a doing. So ordinarily, you’re going to have a couple of moments whereby you’re facing your winger and you have to win,” Neville explained on Sky Sports.

“He really did turn down and reject the one-on-one duel that he directly had against Nunes. He sort of wasn’t positive and didn’t have that belief and I don’t know where that comes from really from Barcola, because you think about the way in which he plays for France, you know, in the World Cup and he gets the ball off PSG and he’s just so direct, he’s rapid and you think right, okay, go straight at Nunes.”

“It doesn’t matter who it is, it could be the best right back in the world he’s playing against, by the way, but certainly when you’re playing against Manchester City, and you get that one or two moments, I don’t know why he rejected the one-on-one and going directly at Nunes and driving him back into the box and just trying to give him a little bit of a problem.

“That that would just concern me and that can’t continue,” added the former Man United defender. “He’s got to make sure he comes out of that. I have to say, Giggsy [Ryan Giggs] used to say this to me. He said, ‘I’ll run at you literally 55, 60 times in training, you’ll take it off me 53, 54 times. But the one time I go, I’ll score.’ And that’s it. You’re done. Your session’s ruined. And that’s the mentality of a winger that will go at someone 10 times in a game, and you might take it off them nine times, but the one time you go past them, you’re done and you’ve had a bad game as a fullback.

“I just didn’t feel like Barcola had that in the game today, and I’m surprised because I would have thought that his youth, his energy, his exuberance, his talent would have just really given him the ability to go and do that, and I don’t know why he didn’t have that today. That was the one surprise for me.

“He can correct that very quickly. He’s got games in midweek, but don’t let that drift into two games, three games, four games, eight games. He’s got to correct it. He’s got to be really direct and keep the confidence of going at defenders one-on-one.”

Up against an, in theory, much weaker opposition in LASK on Wednesday, hopefully we can see Barcola return to being the confident, direct player we all saw at PSG. For now, just like with Wirtz, the big move to Liverpool seemed to have sapped his powers.