Liverpool are looking better than ever: Here’s what makes them firm title favourites
Only 43% people we asked thought Liverpool would make it into the top four last season, and only 13% thought they would be higher than third — they finished fourth. This year 14% think they will win the title and 96% think they will finish in the top two.
It’s the new season and with only 2 games in, people are already backing Liverpool to win the league this season. In 2 games, not only have they managed to score 6 goals, but they have conceded none. Now compare that with their top 6 counterparts. Manchester City have scored 8 and conceded 1, Manchester United have scored 4 and conceded 4, Spurs have scored 5 and conceded 2, and Arsenal have scored 2 and conceded 5.
The attack
Liverpool finished fourth last season, 25 points behind Premier League champions Manchester City. However, the nature of their emphatic Champions League quarter-final victory over Pep Guardiola’s side in April, coupled with a league win over City, suggested they could challenge them this term.
Liverpool’s attacking prowess has not been in question in recent times. The front three of Salah, Firmino and Mane contributed 91 of the club’s 135 goals last season and they were on song again as Liverpool put four goals past West Ham for the fourth time in a row. Salah’s instinct to find the right position allowed him an easy first, while Mane’s intelligence brought him off the wing into central positions for both his goals.
Klopp compared his team to “Rocky Balboa” in the build-up to this game but the depth of his substitutes’ bench and this result may soon see them shed that tag. The German introduced new signing Xherdan Shaqiri, England midfielder Jordan Henderson and Sturridge from the bench but still had midfielders Adam Lallana and Fabinho in reserve. “The performance of all the boys and the midfield of James [Milner] and Georginio Wijnaldum was outstanding,” Klopp added. “We played as good as possible today and we extended a really good pre-season into the Premier League.”
With this being Klopp’s 4th season, everyone knows how his teams play, and you can tell that his footballing DNA is all over this Liverpool team. With a system oriented around high-intensity football, and an attitude of attacking the opposition from the beginning, this Liverpool side does have bits and pieces that are similar to Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund side.
Liverpool last season utilised counter attacks better than anyone else in the Premier League this season — and Mohamed Salah played a major role.
As of January 2018, The Reds have already scored seven goals from what Opta define as ‘fast breaks’, the most in the Premier League and the same amount as Chelsea, who scored the most on their way to the title, managed in the entirety of last season. The season before, when Leicester City won the league, the Foxes recorded the most with six.
Remarkably, Salah alone scored more goals from fast breaks, three, than all but four Premier League teams have managed in total.
The below graphic shows Liverpool’s average team positions from the recent 3–3 draw against Arsenal. The left image shows the first 15 minutes when Roberto Firmino (9) and Salah (11) were pushed high up the pitch, closing down and pressing the opposition.
The second image shows how this changes between minutes 15 and 30; the entire team drops slightly deeper, with the back four in a more conventional shape and James Milner (7) just in front.
You can also see how the team becomes narrower, as they try to stay slightly deeper, ready to spring when the ball is won back. It’s a subtle change, but by sitting off 5–10 yards more as a team, it invites the opposition to push out more and play, thus leaving them susceptible to the counter-attack.
The addition of Salah last season clearly has made a huge difference to Liverpool. Not only for his goals but his speed and danger on the counter-attack, which has added another dimension to the Reds’ attack. Last season, too much emphasis was placed on Sadio Mané. And on top of that, Roberto Firmino is arguably experiencing the best period of his career so far, and with the positional flexibility that he brings to the attack, the front 3 can interchange easily, making man marking for the opposition’s defense a nightmare.
The defense
Liverpool’s attacking potency was never in doubt, so the fact they scored twice away to Crystal Palace was no great surprise. The home side even managed to keep Mohamed Salah off the scoresheet — he had to settle for winning a penalty and providing an assist instead. But the difference this season could be that Liverpool looked so assured in keeping a clean sheet.
They have blown teams away under Jurgen Klopp but they have rarely seen out a tight game as well as they did under the lights at Selhurst Park. It is over a year since they won any match 1–0 and the only reason they did not do so here was because of their defence — specifically the towering centre-back who won the header that sparked their counter-attack.
“Tonight is the reason why you spend £75m on Virgil van Dijk,” Jamie Carragher told Sky Sports afterwards. “There were two or three minutes to go and Liverpool give away a free-kick in a dangerous position. He wins the first header and it goes out for a corner. Then the next one comes in and that is where the breakaway comes, and that’s the goal.”
Van Dijk was a colossus at the back for Liverpool, taking responsibility when it mattered. While he has shown himself to be a ball-playing centre-back, this was one of those evenings where his ability in the air was the key. He made eight clearances — as many as all of his team-mates combined. He won 16 aerial duels too.
The statistics show how much of an impact that Van Dijk has had on this defence. In the 16 Premier League games that he has played for his new club, they have conceded only 10 goals. Extrapolate that over a season and it would mean conceding only 24 goals — something no team has done in almost a decade. He has brought calm at the back.
Smarter football
Whenever Klopp was asked about Liverpool’s poor defensive performances, he continuously attributed the problems to individual lapses in concentration rather than a systematic issue — a point he made publicly and privately to his players after that Spurs loss. He was not going to compromise the high defensive line and pressing style.
Klopp had a point as so many goals were conceded due to mistimed tackles or weak goalkeeping. The counter-argument was the same culprits tended to be guilty and the issue would not be resolved until they were replaced. Liverpool paid the ultimate price in the Champions League final when their goalkeeper failed, but generally the players make fewer mistakes.
In the Premier League, only two errors have led to goals in their last 31 games — the lowest of any current top-flight team over that period. The serial offenders are playing fewer games, or in Loris Karius’ case heading out of the club.
The importance of Naby Keïta
There were turns, there were twists, there were defence-splitting passes and there were inexplicable mistakes. It was wide-eyed and breathless, and it was as if Keita had taken it upon himself to provide a one-man embodiment of everything we have come to expect from Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool side over the last few years. Forever thrilling, forever erratic.
On the evidence of this, and a similarly all-action performance against West Ham United last weekend, it is no wonder Keita has slipped into the first team so seamlessly since his £52.75m move from RB Leipzig. It is telling that the 23-year-old is already leaving his mark on this side, while Fabinho — another highly-expensive midfield recruit — was not even included on the bench here.
“He plays a similar position that he was in at Leipzig,” Klopp said last week as an explanation for Keita’s early inclusion in the midfield. A more simple reason might be that he is simply too exciting for the Liverpool manager, who so adores his “heavy metal football”, to resist.
The highlight of a compelling evening for Keita came midway through the first half, when he produced a piece of skill so outrageous that the stadium seemed to vibrate in a collective groan of admiration. Twisting away, Keita then sent a swirling 40-yard pass onto the toes of Mohamed Salah. Within minutes, he was London’s top trend on Twitter. One social media user simply said that Keita’s turn was “disgusting”. Another pleaded with the midfielder to think of Townsend’s family. This was the brilliance, but it took just 90 seconds for Keita to follow it with a moment of comical headlessness. For reasons unknown, he passed the ball straight to Townsend on the edge of the Liverpool box. Only the crossbar saved his blushes.
It is moments like these that show how different Keita is to Chelsea’s N’Golo Kante, the player with whom he was so frequently compared before the season began. Kante will rarely be found producing a piece of individual skill like that, just like he will never be found giving the ball away so cheaply. Keita seems a far more volatile prospect, for good and bad. It was inevitable that he would whir a little less wildly in the second half, as Palace pushed higher. A chance from the edge of the box was scuffed wide, and those flourishes became a little less frequent. Perhaps this was Keita reining himself in, perhaps it was tiredness. Either way, he showed more than enough in that frenzied first half to reinforce the belief that Klopp’s Liverpool is his natural home.
As the third game week approaches, there’s plenty for Liverpool fans to keep an eye on when watching their team. There are no glaring holes or flaws in the team at the moment, and generally, the team looks strong and well equipped to deal with the challenges of the Premier League. Brighton, at Anfield, at first glance should be a more straightforward affair, but it’ll be very interesting to see whether they’re willing to attack and open themselves up, or instead to sit back and try to secure a point.
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