I had to let myself cool down a couple of days before making this post. Not because I was angry at any of the players or coaches but just because I feel like our season, despite not being catastrophic on paper, has so far exhausted me and has already had lots of highs and lows.
I'm not going to analyze the whole game but the one thing that is a common theme since the beginning of the season: Over and over again we fail miserably at controlling games against big and smaller teams when in the lead or when the game is a draw and we need to manage the oncoming pressure for a stint of time.
What is the common theme between the Brentford, Brighton, City, Tottenham and Chelsea games (at Stamford Bridge)? You guessed it, those are five games where we take the lead (sometimes multiple leads) and we end up losing it. One thing that is also common to these games is that anybody watching them live was not surprised when the lead was finally lost because it had been coming for some minutes. Maths? Okay, lets do the maths on those 5 games. 5 games x 2 points lost each = 10 points. Does that ring any bell? That sounds awfully similar to the number of points separating us from City in the lead doesn't it? I said before that the tittle is won or lost against the 14 other teams outside of the traditional top six. However, even if you take the City, Chelsea, and Tottenham games out of the equation you realize that we lost 6 points against West Ham and Leicester because of the control we are failing to impose on games.
With that said, which parts of the team or what can we identify as the causes/reasons leading to this? I think that having scored 52 goals in 20 games we can safely say that the front line is not the problem. If you add to this that out of those 5 games I mentioned above we scored 2 or more goals in every singe one of them and still got out with 1 point instead of 3 then we can surely say that the guys upfront did what they had to. A frontline is not supposed to go into games with the objective being to score 3 goals in order for you to bag all the points.
My first and most obvious culprits in all of this are three players. Jordan Henderson, Virgil van Dijk and Alisson Becker. Sorry but not good enough. Am I talking about the actual kicking, passing and saving a ball part? No. I'm talking about leadership and the calming effect you're supposed to have on your teammates. For god's sake you're 3 world class players who are Premiership and CL winners. I expect of you that once we've got the lead you calm everybody around you and make sure that nobody puts a foot wrong. Minimize errors, pass the ball around, impose ourselves on the other team FFS we're Liverpool FC. Look at the number of unforced errors in the Brentford game. We literally could not keep the ball for more than 5 seconds before giving it back to Brentford over and over again. Sort it out lads, especially VVD and Alisson. Much less vocal this year, I want to see you shouting your lungs off and directing everybody. We're not supposed to crumble under pressure.
My second culprit is Fabinho. This issue has flew under the radar (including mine) for a good part of the season. What is the issue? One game Fabinho is a 12/10. Then next he gives you a shocker of a game. Like I said many times, if Fabinho is having a bad day at the office then LFC is having a bad day at the office. I'm not sure if this is related to the lack of communication from his backline that I mentioned above but Fab will go from best CDM in the world in one game to headless chicken in the next one with lots of attack passing him by like nothing.
My third culprit is the midfield overall. This is very evident whenever Thiago is injured or out of form for a game. Lack of control over the game by just making the small simple little passes that break the first line of press of the opposition. This leads to generalized panic because you effectively find yourself on the receiving end of what we do to teams which is press them and take the ball from them in various areas of the midfield. Gini and Thiago are/were the two players in that midfield who are very good at keeping the ball under pressure. The latter is excellent because not only he does not lose it he also pierces through one or two lines of press with simple but effective passes. Eliott was showing signs of this as well because of how calm he is on the ball and while not as good as passer as Thiago (yet) he has vision, skills and lots of balance on the ball which helps him keep and move some yards past a first line of press. What is the solution to this problem? We either need to make sure Thiago stays healthy and in form (not very much in our control here) or we need to change how we get out of our half with the ball, at least when we are in the lead. Obviously I'm not a professional manager so take what I'm gonna say with a huge grain of salt but this could be something as simple as keeping the wingers high as they are already but pulling the midfield a few yards back in order to facilitate passing triangles between them, the two full backs and our center-backs with an aim of pulling towards you the pressing lines of the opposition just enough to create a few extra yards of space behind those and then releasing long passes from VVD, Trent and Thiago to Jota, Salah, Mane, Origi. It's not optimal in terms of creating but we've got very skilled passers and the goal here is not necessarily to score but to keep a lead by compacting our midfield and defence a bit more and pulling them just a few yards back all while capitalizing on our fast forwards and the eagerness of the other team to attack us when they are behind on the scoreboard. Effectively, what I'm saying is give the opposition something to think about by feeding them some stick and not carrot after carrot because right now they press us like crazy over and over again with no counter measures from us, we just give the ball back over and over again. Depending on how it is implemented this could also see Thiago (or once he's back Keita) be at the top point of a midfield triangle with Hendo and Fabinho when we have the ball. He would effectively be tucked in between the first and second line of pressing of the opposition with his job being to receive the ball after the pull of the opposition's first line of press and quickly release the front three. Once again, I'm not saying this is supposed to be a creative solution. The nuance here is that its just a way of creatively beating the opposition out of their press instead of getting dispossessed over and over again until we concede. It is inherently creative from an attacking point of view because you employ Salah, Jota, Mane and Firmino who can make things happen whenever you give them space to run into and passes.
I will not say that VVD and the backline (including Alisson), from a defensive point of view, are particularly at blame here. Why? Simply because you cant give the ball away in our own half as much as we did in those games all while playing a very high backline and expect them to always mop up the mess. Some might say oh but they did in past seasons. Yes they did, like what, 3 or 4 attacks per game not 8 to 10+ attacks. I'm sorry but Kane and Son running at Matip and Konate 5+ times in the space of one half is hardly good game management. Same for the Chelsea game where I watched that Chelsea frontline freely run at VVD and Konate all second half long.
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