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Updated: October 6, 2020 7:06:53 am
Defeated Liverpool players finish the English Premier League soccer match between Aston Villa and Liverpool at Villa Park Stadium in Birmingham, England on Sunday 4 October 2020. Aston Villa won 7-2. (Cath Ivill / Pool via AP)
Last year, in the season in which they were proclaimed champions, Liverpool created the most pressure situations in the last third of any Premier League team.
They caught the largest number of players offside. And his goalkeeper, Alisson Becker, was the one who ventured the most outside the penalty area, shining in his role as ‘sweeper-goalkeeper’.
All of this was largely related to a strategy used by coach Jurgen Klopp: the high defensive line.
Four games into the new season, there is talk once again of the high-risk, high-reward tactic of the EPL champions. On the first weekend, Marcelo Bielsa’s newly promoted Leeds United gave Liverpool a big scare by finding holes in their high defense line. Arsenal also took advantage of the same weakness, but the Reds managed to stay undefeated.
Finally, on Sunday, Liverpool ran out of luck. No one could have foreseen a hammering 7-2 for them at Aston Villa, who struggled last season, but a bigger trend is emerging in which their defense loses goals playing higher than usual.
“Being a defender and having played in that position, this team plays much higher up the field,” former Liverpool captain Jamie Carragher told Sky Sports.
“But I think one goes back to the first game: conceding goals. I started conceding goals on the restart at the end of last season … I think you can really look at that and ask yourself: Is it a phenomenon or more of a trend that has been happening in the last 10-15 games? “
The high line
It’s not a time when I told you because Carragher and several other experts had praised Liverpool’s strategy last season. But that’s the thing about this tactic: when it works, it’s fascinating to watch; But when it is not, it often leads to embarrassing situations.
Liverpool are not the first team to employ a high defensive line. It is a common strategy deployed by the best teams in world football. The differences are usually in the finer details brought about by a coach and an individual player.
This is a style of play that sees a team push up when not in possession and close the gaps for the opposition to build a move. It requires a high degree of technical skills.
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How it operates
In Liverpool’s case, when a team regains possession, Klopp’s aggressive gegenpress comes into play to retrieve the ball. However, when the opposing team starts the play, Liverpool’s high defensive line begins to operate.
There are three layers. The first is the primary press, which is in charge of the three forwards, assisted by a midfielder. The idea is to shut down opponents and stifle their passing lanes so they can restrict play to a specific part of the field, build pressure and force mistakes.
For Liverpool, one of the influential players in this role is Sadio Mane, who is relentless in his pressure play compared to the other two forwards, Roberto Firmino and Mo Salah, who are less aggressive. Liverpool pushed their opponents on this part of the pitch more than any other team in the Premier League last season.
If the opponents get out of this press, the full-backs and midfielders come into play, depending on the situation of the match. Your job is to block a pass through and apply pressure so that the ball is played backwards or to the side.
If the second line of defense is also broken, then the controversial high line is in focus. Defenders, in such a scenario, are usually positioned in the middle line. The purpose of that is to make sure the ball stays in the opponent’s half and to reduce passing options, as forwards can be caught out of play if the timing of the pass and the run is not perfect.
Last season Liverpool had 141 offside going for them, more than any other team in the league (second best was West Ham United, with less than 100). It showed that the defense, led by the Dutchman Virgil van Dijk, was operating in a coordinated manner. Van Dijk and his partner in center defense, Joe Gomez, have an impressive ability to locate their man if they are defeated. They both have big strides and are quick, which helps them get the ball back if he passes them.
In the worst case, they are rescued by Alisson, one of the best goalkeepers in the world today. Alisson sometimes plays so high on the field that he can pose as a central defender himself. But he has made so many crucial interventions that he gives Liverpool players the confidence to play on the high line, knowing their backs are covered.
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Aston Villa beat Liverpool 7-2. (Cath Ivill / Pool via AP)
Reward and risk
The obvious payoff of this strategy is that you have the opposition playing the way you want. They are also prone to more mistakes due to incessant pressure, and since the ball is largely in the opponent’s half, the chances of receiving a goal are automatically reduced.
But there is a great risk if you don’t have the players to pull off this strategy successfully or you run into a team that finds ways to bypass the high defensive line. In the Champions League last season, Belgian Genk posed questions to Van Dijk & Co., constantly throwing balls over midfield to get past Liverpool’s baseline.
Leeds, in this season’s opening game, found a way to go beyond the high line and scored three goals, putting Liverpool’s defense under increased scrutiny and last week Arsenal’s Alexandre Lacazette sneaked in twice. beyond Liverpool’s defense to go one-on-one with Alisson. but he couldn’t beat it.
On Sunday against Aston Villa, Liverpool were left without Mane, who is infected with Covid-19, and an injured Alisson, which meant that in the front and back they did not have their key men to execute this strategy.
The fact that Liverpool have conceded a third of the goals compared to the entire title-winning campaign in just the first four games this season shows that there are defensive problems, perhaps stemming from lack of preseason and less time between games. .
Concede seven goals to Aston Villa is a rarity, more for its stubbornness not to resort to a more conservative defensive strategy, and for limiting the damage, after falling three or four goals.
But the fact that they did not abandon their trademark style even in such a situation shows that despite the debate surrounding him, Liverpool are likely to stick to their philosophy in the future.
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