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For the first time, Liverpool will face Man City more in hope than expectation

Jurgen Klopp has been forced to reformat his side to deal with their depleted energy levels – the visit of City may come too soon for them.

JURGEN KLOPP SAYS the 7-1 midweek win over Rangers “changes the mood” around his spluttering side. 

Just as well: it is badly needed. 

Liverpool’s start to the Premier League has been terrible, and they have already waved goodbye to another title tilt. They are tenth in the league, with two wins from eight games and 13 points behind Manchester City already. 

Klopp has already changed Liverpool’s system, but a change in mentality is probably more important.

The 4-3-3 played to now was their perfectly calibrated system, and hit that rare alchemy of a collection of brilliant individual players made better collectively by the ideal system of play. It allowed Liverpool string together three 90-plus-point finishes in three of the last four seasons, reach three European Cup finals, and collect all of the domestic cups. 

The system relied on intense pressing, enormous reserves of energy, and a willingness to lay everything on the line all of the time.

“They are more of an up-and-down team”, said Kevin De Bruyne of his opponents at Anfield this weekend, “and we are a team who has more control of the game.”

But Liverpool’s ability to play at their trademark intensity this season has vanished. Klopp has lucidly explained that Trent Alexander Arnold’s biggest issue is that he does what he is told. He is asked to bomb forward and leave such swathes of space behind him, and the problem is not his but that his team-mates are not pressing as well as they used to and preventing the ball from arriving behind Alexander-Arnold in the first place. That Liverpool can’t play as they used to is because they are not sprinting as often as they used to. 

Can you blame them? This has been one of the great sides of the Premier League era, chalking up three 90-plus-point hauls in four seasons, while also reaching three European Cup finals and collecting all of the domestic cups.

Even reading Intensity – a diary of last season written by assistant manager Pep Lijnders – is an exhausting experience, so one wouldn’t blame Liverpool’s players for finding that they have no more to give. In the book, he describes every game Liverpool played as a final, but how could anyone raise themselves to the emotional and physical pitch for 63 finals in nine months and not suffer some kind of exhaustion when they are asked to come back and do it all over again?

The data this season shows that Liverpool are no longer attacking every game with a knife between their teeth. Instead they are a side playing only in patches, trying to ease their way through games like an elderly man getting through his day while managing chronic pain. 

Their lack of urgency is most clear when games are level. Whereas once they were relentless in chasing leads, now things are more lax, casual. A Liverpool-themed podcast, AI Under Pressure, tweeted some interesting statistics earlier this week, prior to the thumping of Rangers.

From the start of 2017/18 to the end of last season, Liverpool’s Expected Goals figure was vastly higher than their opponents when games were level, whereas this season their opponents’ has been higher.

The graphs makes the drop-off stark.

 

To build on those numbers: when games were level across the six full seasons Klopp had in charge before this, Liverpool averaged 0.87 goals scored and conceded 0.36 whereas this season those figures have worsened to 0.61 scored and 0.78 conceded.

S0 the 4-3-3 system they have played since Sadio Mane was signed in the summer of 2016 has been changed to a 4-2-3-1, more similar to what Klopp used at Dortmund. (That Mane’s signing and exit bookended arguably the most successful system of play in Liverpool’s history should further gild his status within it.)

Now a double-pivot sits in midfield, allowing Jordan Henderson start from a deeper position to shuttle across and fill the space left by Alexander-Arnold forward surges.

Liverpool’s biggest concern in the opening months of the season is that the new approach is a compromise or mitigation against their dwindling energy, rather than the best collective approach to maximise their individual qualities. 

It’s early days, of course, but the defeat away to Arsenal has shown that reformatting the side has been rife with difficulties. Mohamed Salah has been left out on the right wing, much too far away from goal with the central striker’s position occupied instead by Darwin Nunez, who is slowly finding his feet but too often doing so from an offside position.

Alexander-Arnold’s responsibilities have been tilted away from attacking, which undermines his strengths and accentuates his weaknesses while the double pivot in midfield are still being asked to do an enormous amount of work. He will miss Sunday’s clash with City through injury which is a blow, regardless of his defensive shortcomings.  

Finding a rhythm in this new system will take time, but it is time Liverpool can scarcely afford as their season’s purpose becomes a battle to finish among the top four. 

“I expect them to be the best Liverpool possible”, forecast De Bruyne. He might be right, the problem being the best that is possible for Liverpool at the moment is still some way short of what City will produce at Anfield. 

This has been the most thrilling, closely-fought fixture of the last few seasons, but Liverpool have been first to wobble. This weekend, for the first time almost five years, Liverpool will face Manchester City more in hope than expectation.  

 

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