Liverpool narrowly beat nine-man Brentford at the Gtech Community Stadium on Saturday afternoon in a performance which will leave Andoni Iraola with a lot to think about.

The Reds ultimately ran out 2-1 winners in West London, but were aided by a moment of madness from Bees midfielder Yehor Yarmoliuk. With the game poised at 1-0 to Keith Andrews' side, courtesy of an exceptional headed goal from Keane Lewis-Potter, Yarmoliuk opted to headbutt Jeremie Jacquet at a corner on the stroke of half-time.

The Ukrainian was dismissed by referee John Brooks, and this proved to be the turning point in the game. Goals from Victor Munoz and Alexander Isak reversed the scoreline in the second half, before Brentford were reduced to nine when Vitaly Janelt was shown a second yellow card late on.

While Liverpool did well to unlock the home side's compact low block in the second half, Iraola will return to Merseyside deeply concerned by how his team played in the first half, before they had a man advantage.

Part of the issue for the Reds in the first period was how isolated the likes of Isak, Florian Wirtz and Bradley Barcola were in forward areas. When Liverpool were able to breach Brentford's press, their attackers found themselves vastly outnumbered by Bees players in the final third.

A huge culprit for leaving the away outfit's attack isolated was Milos Kerkez. Ronaldo Araujo was deployed at right-back, with the understanding that he'd be the reserved full-back, which would give Kerkez the license to get forward and support the attack.

However, the Hungarian was extremely laboured and lackadaisical in his attempts to get up the pitch and provide overlapping runs.

On the odd occasion he did find himself in advanced areas, he provided very little value, failing to complete his only attempted cross, creating just one chance and accumulating just 0.01 expected assists.

Liverpool needed him to distract Michael Kayode with overlapping and underlapping runs, to create space for Barcola to exploit, but he showed very little urgency or desire to get into these positions, and when he did, he was wasteful.

On top of this ineffective offensive display, Brentford's goal came down his side, with Igor Thiago given too much freedom to cross the ball in acres of space before Lewis-Potter headed in.

Kerkez Can't Keep Starting For Liverpool

Unfortunately for Iraola, he has few alternative options to Kerkez at left-back. The Liverpool hierarchy opted against upgrading in this position over the summer, in the hope that the ex-Bournemouth manager would get the best out of a player who thrived under him on the south coast.

While Kerkez has shown mild signs of improvement this term, most notably in defensive areas, he remains incapable of doing both an adequate defensive and offensive job in the same game.

His three out of ten performance at the Gtech should've frustrated Iraola and prompted the Spaniard to make a tough decision on the player moving forward.

Kerkez cannot continue to start regularly for Liverpool if he continues to show a lack of aptitude towards both sides of the game. He can't pick and choose which aspect he wants to favour on a given day.

Konstantinos Tsimikas, a threatening but defensively limited full-back, is waiting in the wings to take minutes off the Hungary international.

If Iraola wants to make improvements to his team, this is a change he should make. Either that, or he should explore an unconventional solution on this side, such as Joe Gomez at left-back.