Team Analysis: Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool

[peekay]

The final day of the 2014-15 season saw Brendan Rodgers’ Liverpool side get thrashed 6-1 by a mediocre Stoke team. After challenging for the title in the previous season, the transfer of Luis Suarez and poor health of Daniel Sturridge created big issues and performance dropped off a cliff. Whilst Rodgers was previously able to rely on his talented personnel, he struggled to implement a consistent strategy from this point onwards. He was granted the start of the 2015-16 season to rectify the issues, but was unable to do so. He was sacked after a 1-1 draw with Everton in October. A few days later, Jurgen Klopp was hired.

Klopp has already made a number of changes to the systems utilised under Rodgers, and Liverpool have shown many promising signs despite clear tactical and personnel issues.
Pressing and counterpressing

One major tool used by Jurgen Klopp is the infamous counterpress: attempting to regain possession immediately after losing it. Whilst Rodgers’ Liverpool were a high pressing team at their peak in 2013-14, this often came in established possession rather than actively focusing on recovering the ball immediately. But during 2014-15, the team even began to lose their focus on pressing itself as Rodgers found himself stuck between philosophies.
Whilst the nuances of counterpressing can take many months to fully implement, Klopp was able to make immediate improvements.

Progression of Liverpool’s counterpress over the 2015-16 Premier League season
On Jurgen Klopp’s debut (game 9 of the season), Liverpool visited another team focused heavily on counterpressing, Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham. With less than a week of training, Klopp was already able to instill a few key principles of counterpressing into the team. Despite this, many of the suitable support structures were not in place to implement a successful post-counterpress transition (after only days of coaching, this is to be expected). This created a match with many individual duels and second balls, but little sustained possession or clean combination play.
The general aggression of the counterpress was vastly increased, but more importantly, the triggers for counterpressing were seemingly more clearly defined than under Rodgers. The main signal for triggering an ultra-aggressive counterpress was the opponent receiving the ball with his back to [Liverpool’s] goal. This is the most common trigger in general, because makes it more difficult for the receiving ball-player to view or access the game behind him. It reduces his passing options and makes it easier for the ball to be regained. If the ball is not won back quickly, then it forces the opponent into a backwards pass and gives the team additional time to re-structure.
Another core principle the players exhibited almost immediately was a more intense press in the wing area. This is simply because of the lack of connectivity to the other areas of the pitch.

Fewer areas of the pitch are immediately accessible from the wing (from TP’s Empoli team analysis)
The simplicity of these instructions made it easy for the team to co-ordinate the press after little training time together, but they were not yet able to assess the situation for themselves or alter the intensity of the press. This meant that even if the team had poor initial pressing access, the midfield would still press aggressively without closing passing lanes, allowing Tottenham an easy route out.

The rest can be found here:

http://spielverlagerung.com/2016/07/15/tactical-analysis-jurgen-klopps-liverpool/

 

[rurikbird]

Really fascinating stuff, thanks. I'll quote a few of the most interesting parts for folks who can't bother to read the whole thing:

As the year went on, many more of Liverpool’s attacks were forced to the wing. Whilst this can have disadvantages in attacking, it creates more stability if the ball is lost. With a strong central presence, it becomes much easier to defend transitions that start from the wing because of the reduced passing options the opposition immediately has.
This increase was largely due to two connected reasons. Firstly, the emphasis of Liverpool’s attacks has gradually moved wider: in the first half of the Premier League season, no team completed a lower percentage of their opposition half passes on the wing. This improved to 13th in the league for the second half of the season.

This is something I noticed too (but couldn't show the stats for it or analyze in quite the same scientific way) – we used to clog the middle in attack way too much in Rodgers' last season and initially under Klopp too. People were saying that Coutinho, Lallana and Firmino are all too similar and get in each others way. But after a few months the same players learned to attack with more variety and use the wings (and "halfspace" – that's a new hipster term I need to learn) more effectively. But we are only half-way there – Dortmund were absolutely deadly on the wings and in the aforementioned "halfspace."

Something on Coutinho and Milner's shortcomings:

Firmino & Lallana were the primary proponents of such techniques. Coutinho had more difficulty achieving this; despite curving his movement suitably, his tackling positioning was often poor. This makes the Liverpool press more one-dimensional, and is perhaps one key reason why the team were much less effective at regaining the ball with Coutinho on the pitch, despite the fact he had a similar number of direct regains from counterpressing (0.81 per 90 minutes) to Firmino (0.82) and Lallana (0.94).

These variable movements are a major strength of another rumoured Liverpool target: Mario Gotze. [...] There could still be a place for Gotze (or a similar player), who would have a massively positive impact on the team’s ability to re-structure in attacking organisation. In this way, Gotze presents a different profile to Liverpool incumbent Philippe Coutinho. The Brazilian provides valuable progression in early build-up phases, where he can dribble or make quick combination plays in the halfspace. But in attacking organisation, he finds it difficult to make consistently helpful movements, particularly with his back to goal.

Liverpool suffered from this very effect in the latter stages of the season, particularly when James Milner was utilised in a double pivot with Emre Can. Despite joining Liverpool largely to play in central midfield, Milner spent much of his time situated anywhere but central midfield in these moments. Not only does this poor structure make it more difficult to attack effectively, but it makes quickly regaining possession a near-impossible task.

On Sturridge and other strikers movements:

Daniel Sturridge spent much of the season injured, but his return had a profound effect on Liverpool’s ability to consistently shift play forwards at speed. This was primarily down to his proclivity to drift ball-side (and particularly to the right) in transition. Whilst this is a strategically worse position for combination play and possession structure, it has some key advantages in transition for a player such as Sturridge.

Sturridge is not the only Liverpool player with a multi-dimension skillset in offensive transitions. Divock Origi has vastly improved his timing of runs in behind, and his new-found strength makes it easier for him to keep Premier League central defenders from slowing him down in a tight tussle. Sadio Mane provides a huge transition threat, and had been invaluable in these situations at Southampton & Salzburg. Sturridge’s inclination to drift wide benefits Mane’s preference to move beyond the strikers (with a preference of starting on the left and moving inside).

Danny Ings missed much of the 2015/16 season with injury, but is one of the top transition forwards in the league. Much like Sturridge, he is capable of playing as the outlet or reacting to an initial break and offering immediate support, with a fast-paced movement into the centre.[...]
Firmino & Sturridge only started four more games together throughout the rest of the season, and Mario Gotze seems more likely to return to Dortmund. But the deadly potential of these personnel combinations suggest Liverpool may not be far away from something great. Particularly down the right side, where Sturridge naturally prefers to drift towards anyway, a number of dangerous combinations could be created.

On Mane:

In the match against Aston Villa, James Milner was often the player tasked with occupying the opposition central defenders when Sturridge & Firmino both shifted away from that area. Lallana has been used in a similar way on occasions throughout the year, but it may also present some of the key reasoning for the signing of Sadio Mane, who operated in a similar way during his time at Southampton.
He has the added advantage of lightning top speed, but Mane’s agility and acceleration is particularly outstanding. This means he can quickly adapt and adjust his movement to play, beating his direct opponent to the ball. As well as making him adept at occupying opposition central defenders, it also ensures he is a consistent threat in counterpressing situations. Mane’s manager in Salzburg, Roger Schmidt, famously utilised an alarm clock in training that went off five seconds after conceding possession if the ball was not yet regained.
Mane’s time at Salzburg was spent mainly as an indented winger on the left of Schmidt’s flexible 4-4-2/4-2-2-2 system. Being able to adapt to the movement of his teammates was another key strength developed during this time. With such outstanding pace, it was often expected that Mane would focus only on making movements behind, but after a shift in play he provided a valuable passing option for combination play after indenting infield. Particularly when the strikers remain in their traditional advanced position, Mane is capable of combining with teammates in the ’10 space’ for spectacular results.

There is more stuff there about Moreno's positioning, the way Sturridge and Firmino play together, the difference between Rodgers' pressing and Klopp's etc, but that's probably enough for now.

 

[Mersey86]

Thanks for the summary and analysis. Very interesting.

 

[Frogfish]

A superb read. Thanks for posting that Peekay.

It's very interesting how Milner is criticised for his poor positioning. Generally I rate him far ahead of Henderson but this is an aspect of his game I doubt many of us had considered. Though no doubt Klopp has, so either he will be working overtime with Milner on rectifying this failing or we will see a lot less of Milner this coming season.

See : Milner also exhibited one of the other key negative traits that caused issues for Liverpool midfielders ....
To be found under the 'Defensive transition issues' sub-title halfway down.