Look at today for example. Yes Doku completed some dribbles, but most times Trent funneled him to the byline or inside and Doku wasn’t really threatening for the most part. Yet the prevailing narrative is that he got destroyed by Doku.
He has actually been decent to good at defending this season yet people say he’s been a horrific defender. I don’t think this is quite true if you watch him play.
I won’t claim that he’s an amazing defender but he’s not a bad one either, he’s just a perfectly average to good defender but the narrative is that he’s a liability. It’s frustrating to see.
The problem with Alexander-Arnold isn’t so much in games like today’s where he can get himself fired up and he knows that if he doesn’t do his job his side will be punished, it’s in the games against mid/lower-table opposition where he shifts too much of his focus onto the attack and neglects the defensive part of his job.
I’ve said for a long time, it’s not that he can’t defend it’s that he often doesn’t fancy doing it. It’s the dawdling back over the halfway line while an attack is breaking down his flank, it’s the standing still while triangles are played around him, it’s the shirking out of tackles & headers. He knows if he does that against City he’ll be putting his team in trouble, especially with Doku playing as well as he has been.