Liverpool manager Arne Slot must find a way to arrest the team's slide even as the pressure mounts on him, former skipper Steven Gerrard said after the Merseyside club were thrashed 4-1 by PSV Eindhoven in the Champions League on Wednesday.
The humbling defeat was Liverpool's ninth in their last 12 games in all competitions, their worst 12-game stretch since the 1953-54 season and the third successive game in which they have lost by three goals.
Slot helped Liverpool win the Premier League in his first season in charge and while they now languish in 12th, and 13th in the Champions League, Gerrard dismissed talk of a crisis.
"Crisis is a strong word, and disrespectful to some of the players that have delivered for this club, and for the manager that's delivered three months ago," Gerrard, who made 710 appearances for Liverpool, told TNT Sports.
"But you cannot deny the team is struggling massively, they're on a terrible run, confidence is at an all-time low and they just keep bleeding.
"Unless the manager can find answers and stability in the team it's going to continue."
Gerrard's former England and Liverpool teammate Steve McManaman believes talk about Slot's future is premature.
"I think it's far too early for such questions," he said. "They would have to go out of the Champions League and be wallowing near the bottom of the league.
"They play Arsenal second week of January, that's when the question should be asked. They'll be halfway through the season by then."
Liverpool next visit West Ham United in the Premier League on Sunday.