Liverpool has lost twice this week and faces a trip to Crystal Palace next, but it hasn't taken long for some to level criticism at the direction in which the team is heading

There was a first for Liverpool under Andoni Iraola this week: a defeat that could genuinely be described as, on paper, unexpected.

Of course, losing to Manchester City and Arsenal was not what Liverpool was aiming for — and a trip to Turkiye is never easy — but this was the first occasion in which the Reds lost a match that they unquestionably should have been winning.

Even then, it didn't really matter all that much. Liverpool will still progress into the knockout phase — probably inside the top eight positions — and took the chance to make five changes to its starting team. As defeats go, in the bigger picture, it was an acceptable one.

Quite clearly, as Virgil van Dijk outlined, Liverpool will have to defend better than that moving forward. In terms of the Champions League campaign, though, it is a very minor setback.

It is in that context that the outcome should be assessed. Following on, four days later, from a narrow defeat at home to champions-elect Arsenal, however, there was not a lot of nuance in some quarters.

And Dominik Szoboszlai, it seems, is the latest Liverpool player who appears to have become a Talking Point. It was, for a long time, Florian Wirtz. Cody Gakpo took the mantle for most of last term. Szoboszlai might be next under the spotlight.

It would be fair to say that Szoboszlai didn't perform particularly well in Istanbul, but there has been chatter about his role in the Liverpool side for some time.

"I've never believed Szoboszlai is a central midfield player," Jamie Carragher said last week.

"Now, he's signed a new contract and I can only imagine in those talks, they were desperate for him to stay, and he's almost said, 'I want to play midfield'. He's moved around a bit and he started the season in central midfield. I don't see him as that."

Others have been more critical of his role in 'imbalancing' the Liverpool team, noting that some consistency was found when he was out of the side through injury.

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That doesn't tell the full story, though. He missed, among other games, straightforward wins over LASK and Villarreal — in which Liverpool conceded six times, by the way — and returned when Liverpool was already 1-0 down to Arsenal.

As Carragher would write on social media a few days later, Szoboszlai is best as a number eight in a 4-3-3, but Iraola doesn't have that kind of position in his team. That doesn't, though, mean the end of the Hungarian in terms of his usefulness.

Very similar conversations were being had about Gakpo for much of last season, only for him to start the Iraola era as arguably the Reds' most important attacker. Wirtz too appears to have begun to turn a corner.

In another couple of weeks, there will be another scapegoat, and the same will be true of Szoboszlai as well. The 25-year-old is a good option to have available again, but certainly not a problem.