Do Liverpool Need a Creative Midfielder to Break Down Defensive Teams?
On the most recent edition of the Tactics Weekly pod, host Daniel Rhodes quizzed Paul Dalglish in an AI:PRO Q&A Special (you can listen for FREE for one week). One particular question (below) posed was that of breaking down defensive sides, an issue Liverpool have had for quite a while - harking back to troubles under Rodgers.
Do Liverpool need a creative CM to break down a low block, or is the positional play (i.e. width & using the pace …
Porto 0-5 Liverpool: A Tactical Breakdown
Liverpool are one of the few clubs still undefeated within the Champions League, but few expected the utterly dominant display, away to Porto, which effectively ended the tie.
How then did Liverpool approach the game? For while the scoreline suggests a brutal decimation of Porto, it was not quite that simple.
The match was predominantly played within the middle of the pitch, with action zones, average positions and the touch maps reflecting that. Indeed, Liverpool may have had a majority …
Southampton 0-2 Liverpool: A Tactical Breakdown
It might just be me, but I do love a good-old 0-2 victory. Indeed, this was Liverpool's first 2-0 league victory of the season. And we should not knock that at all, a 2-0 is an underrated scoreline, it usually means control by one side within a fair game, a game in which the opposition is resolute enough to not concede more, but the winning team is focussed enough to not concede at all. That's a massive generalisation, and not …
A Critical Look at Loris Karius
Please note that this article was written before the Southampton game.
Over the years, Liverpool have had persistent goalkeeping problems that have ultimately contributed to the club being unable to make decisive surges forward to win silverware. Liverpool’s last trophy was won in 2012 with Pepe Reina between the sticks, and a year later Simon Mignolet was signed to assume the position for the club moving forward. Since then, Liverpool haven’t won any form of silverware and the current manager …
Liverpool 2-2 Spurs: A Tactical Breakdown
It was a thrilling game, in which the points were shared, but one in which the away side will be by far the happier of the two sides. Liverpool dominated the entirety of the first-half, scoring early, cutting through Spurs with ease and squandering glorious chance after chance. Liverpool's gameplan, to press aggressively and surrender the ball was good, and with Spurs using a 4-2-3-1, it became perfect. The spaces were there for Liverpool to exploit, and on a number of …
Huddersfield 0-3 Liverpool: A Tactical Breakdown
If I were asked to sum up the Liverpool victory over Huddersfield, there's one term which would immediately spring to mind: game management. Quite often, football games aren't decided by tactics, errors, luck and the like all come into play from time to time, and usually, it's Liverpool making errors where they should not be doing so which costs them. For this game, however, Liverpool did not fall back into the same costly traps which we've seen many a time, …
How Did Swansea Tactically Outsmart Liverpool?
"They are like a Formula 1 car. But at 4pm in London it will be difficult to speed, they would be a car like any other. We needed to make sure there was traffic, we could not let them have open roads to drive in." - Carlos Carvahal.What a quote that is. Indeed, it tells a story of the game, but whilst it is catchy and well-rounded, it does not quite tell the story of the game, a game …
Liverpool 4-3 Man City: A Tactical Breakdown
From start to finish, Liverpool's Premier League tie with Manchester City was electric. Essentially, two very similar schools of tactical thinking came together, and on this occasion, Klopp's relentless pressing from the front, numerical overloads, and astute counter-pressing positioning came out on top.
Instead of breaking down the goals in this analysis, because a majority of them were from individual errors, we'll be looking at Liverpool's and City's shape, positioning and pressing, and how these, in themselves, created chances, and …
Van Dijk & Keita | Posing A New Threat From Deep
I started writing a tactical piece a few months ago which was set to be titled ‘How to Stop Liverpool’. This was around the time that Liverpool suffered two bad results at Anfield in the space of a week by drawing with both West Brom and Everton despite dominating the ball in both matches. The reason I looked to write that piece was because it seemed so easy to nullify Liverpool when watching each game - by simply allowing Liverpool’s …
Tactical Analysis: Breaking Down Arsenal 3-3 Liverpool
It took some doing for Liverpool to best their most ridiculous performance of the season, but somehow they managed to do it. Unlike the Sevilla fixture though, Liverpool only surrendered control for a brief handful of minutes: but that was more than enough for Arsenal to sweep in and turn the game on its head. Yet, were it not for a few moments of madness, we would likely be here, hailing a magnificent performance from Liverpool, once again.
https://twitter.com/Caley_graphics/status/944324234150645765
https://twitter.com/GoalCharts/status/944894603110514688
In …