For long periods of their 2-1 victory over Chelsea on Sunday afternoon, Liverpool didn’t feel quite like Liverpool.
It’s been two months since Arne Slot’s first competitive game in charge, but this was something new: his first Premier League match at Anfield against genuinely strong opposition. Previous home games were against Brentford, Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth — sides you expect Liverpool to dominate.
There was no guarantee of that against Chelsea, who wanted to play out from the back and enjoy long spells of possession. Liverpool, for most of the last decade, would try to deny opponents that luxury.
But under Slot, Liverpool have changed their approach. The club’s previous assistant manager, Pep Lijnders, was fond of saying “intensity is our identity”. These days, it’s less about intensity and more about patience without possession. As Chelsea’s defenders built up play, Liverpool’s attackers largely allowed them to have the ball, taking up a 4-2-4 mid-block.
The familiar thrilling, 100mph football from the Jurgen Klopp era is no more. But then, considering Klopp’s side was criticised last season for a lack of control and for tiring late in games, such an adjustment is understandable.
Pressing has various purposes. The two most influential managers of the last 15 years, Pep Guardiola and Klopp, initially had very different views on the value of pressing.
Guardiola, in his Barcelona days, used to say that pressing was important because his side wasn’t suited to playing without possession, so they had to ensure they won the ball back quickly.
Klopp, on the other hand, referred to gegenpressing in relation to playmaking: explaining that retrieving the ball when the opposition were pushing forward into attack was useful for creating chances. In other words, Guardiola spoke about pressing in a defensive sense, and Klopp in an attacking sense.
So let’s separate the two. In an attacking sense, Liverpool, while not relentlessly pushing up onto Chelsea’s defence, still won the ball high on multiple occasions. After 90 seconds, Diogo Jota intercepts Levi Colwill’s pass, intended for Moises Caicedo, and Liverpool duly have possession with Chelsea out of position.
Here, when Reece James plays a backpass to Robert Sanchez, Cody Gakpo curves his run to block off a return pass, while Jota pushes up onto Colwill to discourage a short forward pass. Sanchez seemingly changes his mind at the last minute and plays the ball against Gakpo, and is fortunate it doesn’t rebound into the net.
Midway through the first half, James is pursued by Dominik Szoboszlai, and then by Gakpo, before Jota nips in and steals the ball. James was relieved to see the referee awarding him a free-kick.
And, in the second half, Darwin Nunez pushed up onto Sanchez and forced him into a hurried pass, which fell straight at the feet of Szoboszlai.
So, while Liverpool were more passive than we’re accustomed to, they still forced high turnovers and won possession quickly on occasion — they simply picked their moments.
Defensively, things were less encouraging. Liverpool’s 4-2-4 worked well in terms of preventing passes from opposition centre-backs into central midfielders, but at times the formation looked a little ‘square’ and prone to diagonal passes through the lines.
The main issue was coping with Malo Gusto, who played as a half-back from the left, pushing into inside-left midfield roles. Liverpool struggled to cope with balls like this (below), although Gusto could have been more positive with his subsequent pass.
Here’s another example — this time James penetrates Liverpool’s block with relative ease. Again, Gusto could have been more positive, driving at the defence rather than playing a simple pass out wide — but considering he was a right-back playing as a left-back-cum-attacking-midfielder, we can forgive him for being a little unfamiliar with this situation.
James, while fortunate to get away with with being caught in possession in the first half, was effective at playing the ball through Liverpool — this shimmy away from Nunez and Gakpo, and his forward pass to Caicedo, again found a Chelsea player between the lines.
Chelsea’s equaliser, while a well-worked move, was too easy from Liverpool’s perspective.
While Liverpool’s centre-forwards were good at stopping passes from defence into Chelsea’s central midfielders, it wasn’t always clear who was supposed to close them down if they received balls from wider areas. The two Liverpool central midfielders are Ryan Gravenberch, who is close to Romeo Lavia, and Curtis Jones, who spent much of the game in a left-ish position to keep an eye on Cole Palmer. Caicedo, therefore, is going free in the centre circle.
This felt fairly simple for Caicedo — receiving the ball under little pressure, and having time to lift his head and feed Nicolas Jackson — although the weight of the pass and the timing of the run shouldn’t be underestimated. The finish, too, was slick.
When Liverpool dropped deep late on, they largely defended well. Alexis Mac Allister offered more positional discipline than Jones, while Joe Gomez was more comfortable challenging in the air than Alexander-Arnold.
Overall, Chelsea only created around a goal’s worth of chances in the xG stakes, and Liverpool’s defensive record this season is good: only three goals conceded, and though the underlying numbers suggest they should probably have conceded around seven, it’s still the best record in the Premier League.
Still, playing against good opposition — sixth-placed Chelsea — showed there are some flaws in Liverpool’s defensive block. Their next three matches are against Arsenal (3rd), Brighton (5th) and Aston Villa (4th).
By the next international break, we should be more certain about how well this approach without possession works, and whether Liverpool will be able to sustain a title challenge in Slot’s first season in charge.
