YOU can bet plenty of Liverpool players will be dropping subtle hints to Jamie Carragher to change his mind about retiring in light of what happened at the weekend.

With Carragher missing injured, Liverpool were incredibly poor in defence at Southampton. They just weren’t at it whatsoever.

Brendan Rodgers will surely be chewing away at the ear of Carragher hoping for a change of heart, asking him to come back for pre-season training and see how he goes.

But I think Carragher’s mind is made up. He knows his body better than anyone and it looks as though he’ll be finishing come the end of the season.

That will leave Liverpool a bit of a problem.

Martin Skrtel is all over the shop at the moment. He is playing in the knowledge his manager doesn’t rate him and that he’ll be off in the summer. That isn’t easy.

It has completely knocked Skrtel back. He has the image of somebody menacing, but he was a pussycat at the weekend. And not for the first time this season.

We aren’t privy to what goes on behind the scenes at Liverpool, but Skrtel looks like he knows his number is up and he probably already knows where he is moving in the summer.

Certainly, somebody will take him. Take away this season, and Skrtel has been very good the last few seasons. Maybe a move would suit him to get back to his best.

The decision to play Joe Allen instead of Lucas backfired. Look, I understand that Lucas hadn’t trained for much of the week because of a knock, but if he wasn’t fit, then what was he doing on the bench?

He was fit enough to play 45 minutes, which was exactly the same amount of time Allen played, and we already know he was playing while in need of a shoulder operation.

I’ve no idea why Rodgers would want to risk the Welshman.

And with Carragher not playing, it surely made sense to have Lucas shielding the defence. Instead, it was far too late by the time the Brazilian made his entrance at the interval.

With Pepe Reina also missing – although Brad Jones helped keep the score down – Liverpool were without their spine, and you can’t get away from that.

The spine is all the more important when the team doesn’t play well. It helps keep things together and solid. That’s why it is called a spine.

It was a strange game. Liverpool had quite a few chances in the first half but, in all honesty, the summation would be that the visitors never cope with what Southampton threw at them in attack.

But as well as Southampton played, Liverpool were awful.

Daniel Sturridge gave the kind of performance that made you see why Chelsea sold him. But he has been very good for Liverpool so far, and I’m sure Rodgers will have a quiet word. Sturridge is better than that.