Has this been posted? If so, my apologies, but it's quite revealing:
Jonathan Northcroft
I think it is his most fundamental idea,” says Alberto Moreno, so it’s where we should start with Liverpool. There are other questions you could ask about the Premier League’s most contradictory team. Like, how, in their last six games, could they manage 126 shots yet score just seven times? Or, how could they ship 19 goals in 11 matches across this campaign when, in all but one, they held control?
But let’s stick to Jurgen Klopp’s “fundamental” . Pressing. Few are looking at it in the discussion of Liverpool’s curious start to the season — but they should.
Moreno reiterates there is no change in the key instruction given to players: “The manager has always remained pretty faithful to the way he wants to play the game... as soon as we lose possession, do everything we can to surround the ball and get it back as quickly as possible.” Pressing. “The best playmaker there is,” Klopp once said.
So, consider this. Analysis using data provided by InStat, the global service for sports professionals like scouts and coaches, suggests a remarkable drop-off in Liverpool’s pressing game since the start of 2017-18. If results are mediocre then so is the performance of Klopp’s side’s core activity.
The InStat data was analysed by CIES Football Observatory to produce a table showing the average seconds in possession allowed to the opposition by every Premier League team. How long a side lets you have the ball before winning it back. In 2016-17, Liverpool were virtually top of this table — neck-and-neck with Tottenham and Manchester City as the team allowing foes the least time on the ball. In 2017-18, Klopp’s men have fallen back dramatically. They’re joint ninth in the rankings alongside West Ham and lowest placed of all the “big six” clubs.
While City and Spurs have honed their pressing games further, Liverpool have suddenly relaxed their efforts. You now get an extra 3.6 seconds per possession against Liverpool compared to Manchester City. A lot can happen in 3.6 seconds on a football pitch.
You have to be careful with stats, of course. In a sport as multi-faceted as football, taking one measure from one source and drawing definitive conclusions is dangerous. So The Sunday Times went seeking further information.
Opta, the Premier League’s official data partner, provided some. Liverpool are down, down in terms of running numbers, covering less distance overall and making fewer sprints than in 2016-17, when they were the competition’s hardest-working team.
Anfield Index is a respected platform that, for several seasons, has analysed Liverpool’s pressing in obsessive detail. AI reported that in the first four games of 2017-18, Liverpool’s overall volume of “pressing actions” was down 15%, and instances of “group pressing” down 50%.
We then sought anecdotal evidence and here is a verdict from inside the camp of a side who have faced Liverpool this season. “It was easy-oasy. We had a nice afternoon.” The team in question came braced for the kind of full-throttle test they’d endured in their previous meeting, at Anfield, but found the game rather “flat” and felt Liverpool had nothing like the “legs” they did before.
Could there be deliberate reasons for Liverpool’s shift? Are Liverpool trying to join the counterattackers? Perhaps there’s something in this, for AI have found a big improvement in a good metric: Liverpool pressing actions leading to shots. Maybe Klopp is also trying to conserve players, mindful of their mid-season tiredness in 2016-17, and that there are now Champions League games to play. But you go back to Moreno: “We’re trying to remain faithful to the ethos [Klopp] has had from the beginning.”
It seems likeliest that Liverpool are just having a “dip”. A period where confidence is lacking, and they’re carrying out none of their fundamentals with enough conviction. Pressing is also very much a collective effort, and selection has been disrupted by several factors: new signings, Sadio Mane’s suspension, the Philippe Coutinho saga, injuries, rotation.
Finally, there is the significant absence of Adam Lallana. Identified by Klopp as his “leader” of the high-press, Lallana has long had one of the best individual stats in the league for quick ball recoveries. Klopp will have been as cheered as supporters by Lallana’s Instagram post on Thursday, showing himself back at Melwood. Out since pre-season with a thigh injury, Lallana raised hopes he could even return for Liverpool’s first game after the international break, against Manchester United.
It will be Klopp’s 700th game in management and next Sunday marks his second anniversary at Liverpool. Today he meets a predecessor, Rafa Benitez, which seems another reason to take stock. Benitez won the European Cup and produced Liverpool’s strongest starting XI (in 2008-09) in almost 30 years, but it wasn’t enough to hold on to — forget England — football’s truly impossible job.
“The reality is, the teams that have won the title, probably 90% of the time are the teams with the most money,” Benitez says. And yet managing Liverpool is about winning the title. “You have to build a team that is good enough to compensate for the difference,” Benitez concludes.
And do your basics brilliantly. So much — defending, scoring — will come easier again if Liverpool reboot their pressing.
Thank god Lallana will be back-ish when the league resumes, but the rest need a rocket up the arse.
