Alexis Mac Allister faces question three other Liverpool players must also answer

The sight of Alexis Mac Allister helping drag Argentina from the brink of miserable defeat against England to a World Cup final showdown with Spain on Sunday prompted the same question from watching Liverpool supporters. Where has this player been for much of the last 12 months? While there were the occasional glimpses of Mac Allister operating at his tigerish best - the Champions League win over Real Madrid and his injury-time interventions at Nottingham Forest the standouts - they were few and far between during an attritional campaign for both team and player. Too often, the 27-year-old appeared off the pace and was guilty of allowing games to pass him by for large periods in the engine room, and often failed to provide sufficient defensive cover for a creaking rearguard.