Current Gomez is not someone who has rhythm, so Szobo’s energy in front of him is helpful. When I saw the XI against West Ham, I thought Wirtz would be inside right like in Frankfurt, but then I wondered where our width would come from that side. It was Szobo and understood the reasons why.
Like I said, I believe there is a pressing plan, but it doesn’t mean it will work. It’s not. And I wondered whether they would at some point decided to perhaps not try and press as high as possible, but alter it a little bit and defend more mid-block, at least in some games.
From what I see, the plan is still to press, but I understand part of the reasons why it’s not working. Some other things as in what was our pre-season like in terms of pure physical preparation as foundation for a long season, I have no idea about, I don’t have those stats. That can be good or bad regardless if we change 10 or 0 players.
Ekitike’s link up game has actually been one of the little positives, but in some games Slot forced Isak over him and I think against United and Forest those were not good decisions. Again, more reasons decide whether you win or lose a game, but that was my opinion in both cases at the time. And I know we’ll have to build Isak up through game time.
Thing is, we saw Kerkez both tucked in and released wider and higher and the difference wasn’t great. You still hope we can at least get a good squad player out of him because of his physical qualities, age and I’ll give him that he can swerve a nice cross from far out without much preparation. In other aspects, now seeing him much closely than at Bournemouth, he seems really limited. From pre-season and early season, I got the impression we might use him a little bit like City used Walker at times, tucking inside more, more reserved than the other full back, provide protection with great recovery pace and last ditch tackles, body on the line, etc. Kerkez does that, even if for me he’s too aggressive, too animated, erratic, wild. In almost everything he does.
They don’t all bomb forward in an equal way though. I understand we’ve lost someone like Trent, on the ball a rare talent. But surely teams shouldn’t rely on having a special player like him to be able to have a quality build-up. Players like him are rare.
I actually think the type of coach Slot is and what I’ve heard of him what he likes, I’m not surprised at the type of attacking players we signed. Wirtz is totally what Slot adores. I made the prediction very early on last season that Slot will want the club to sign a new #10 and #9. Did I see so many changes happening, even taking Jota’s tragedy in account? No.
Did we do a bit too much? Perhaps. We’ve seen it before with other clubs, so it’s not something unique to us this season.
There’s more than one reason why we’ve performed this way. And perhaps some stuff which we don’t know and cannot tell (for me, that’s the quality of our pre-season, for example).
to @LFC: The blame for Liverpool’s struggles this season will inevitably fall on Arne Slot, but let’s not ignore the glaring mistakes made by those behind the scenes. Look at Liverpool’s success on previous seasons: it was built on having six top-tier attackers” / X