He didn’t mince his words, stating that Kerkez ‘looked like a baby’ and a ‘youth team player’ when criticising his latest performance.
“The boy Kerkez, to be honest with you, at this point in time, he looks like a youth-team player,’ he said on The Gary Neville Podcast.
“I know he’s a good player, but he looks like he’s playing for the youth team or the under-21s. He looks so naive. He looks like a baby out there. He’s losing 50-50s with [Pedro] Neto.
“He’s had Premier League experience, it’s not like he’s come in from another country. He’s got a lot of games under his belt, he’s played at these grounds before, so I expected him to slot in.
“One, he’s playing alongside Virgil Van Dijk, the best centre half in the world, so if you want to play in a back four, you want to play with great defenders and he is doing.
“And he’s got players who work hard on that side, it’s not like he’s playing on the right with Salah in front of him, which is always a bit more difficult because you always get a little bit more exposed.
“But I have to say from the first ten minutes of that game against Bournemouth on the first game of the season, he’s struggled.”
Kerkez wasn’t the sole target of Neville’s criticism, with the former England star also launching scathing attacks on Jeremie Frimpong and Conor Bradley, alongside Liverpool’s forward line.
“Frimpong looks like he should be playing as a right winger, he doesn’t perform like a right-back,” he said. “Conor Bradley just isn’t doing it and Andy Robertson is battling but he’s not quite where he was a few years ago.
“Liverpool’s problems are as much to do with full-back as anywhere. They need to button that down.”
He added: “A lot has been made of Liverpool’s defensive work, and rightly so, but today that’s not why they’ve lost this game.
“They’ve lost this game because in the last 15-20 minutes, their creative players, their players in the final half of the pitch, the midfielders and the forwards who were absolutely useless.
“They were giving the ball away like you wouldn’t believe. Gakpo down here, Salah over on that far side; the wastage.
“Wirtz not knowing how to get into a game in the last 15 minutes when it was there for the taking, and just almost sort of marking Caicedo, I was watching him a lot.”