That’s the problem, isn’t it?
I don’t think this team is lacking for resilience, even though it may seem so. We’ve been battered by not just injuries, but also poor refereeing and downright bad luck over the last few months. It wasn’t too long ago that we were still at the top of the table, beating a team 7-0 away.
I see the common narrative that Klopp is doing something wrong with the tactics, or that we should have bought centre-backs earlier, or a million and one other things. But the truth is, this is really the perfect storm of a season.
Let’s look at this game first. It wasn’t a bad game by any means, especially considering our recent form. Yes, we didn’t dominate them like we did in past seasons, but that is to be expected of a team trying to play its way out of poor form. And despite what many of you claim, we were easily matching them for the whole time until they got gifted the two goals. It was a game of fine margins, and despite the scorelines in some of the games over the past few seasons, it has always been a game of fine margins won only by a healthy dose of luck and taking of chances well. To say we were playing poorly is a large exaggeration, we were playing as well as could be expected given all that’s happened recently.
Except, we just don’t seem to have any luck at all this season. We don’t seem to be getting any 50-50 balls, all the second balls just seem to fall the wrong way for us, and our finishing seems to be just that little bit off at times. Just when we’re finally playing at a level where we could snatch a win, we inexplicably give up two goals that we would never (except against Madrid teams) give up, within 3 minutes. If this happened just twenty minutes in, I could see them digging their heels in and battling on. Coming when they did however, I don’t see how people can reasonably expect the team to not get completely deflated. One goal was hard enough, let alone 2?
And bad luck it is. So many people are whining on and on about how we should have bought centre-backs in the summer. To recap, we sold Lovren, but we bought Thiago in, which in theory enabled us to free up Fabinho to serve as a fourth centre-back if need be. How anyone could claim that we definitely needed some great player (who would have needed to have been willing to sit on the bench for most of the season) to be brought in is beyond me. The hindsight bias is strong, especially with the claims of “oh but Gomez and Matip are made of glass”. Let’s check those facts for a moment. The only injuries that Gomez has suffered recently were impact injuries, and had nothing to do with whether his body is fragile or not. And Jürgen has already come out to say that Matip had been playing on with an injury all season. Prior to joining us, he barely missed any games for Schalke. To say he is extremely injury-prone belies the fact that for much of his career with us, he’s missed games mainly because of the form of other players keeping him off the starting lineup. Van Dijk also had an incredible injury record until this one, and no one could have foreseen Pickford being an idiot (I may be wrong on this one). The odds of us losing 3 of our starting centre-backs to season-ending injuries were extremely low and I could have made a lot of money betting on that. And yet somehow that happened. None of the players we have tried in centre-back so far have really been sub-par to a massive degree. Phillips and Williams have played really well for 5th and 6th choice centre-backs. For all that people gripe on and on, I don’t think we would have brought in both Davies and Kabak if Matip hadn’t gone down injured, and for good reason. What would they be doing in a perfectly normal season? 4th and 5th choice? Is that a reasonable expectation? Furthermore, despite people claiming we need to buy buy buy, we had to loan out Minamino also because we were out of first-team slots. Just imagine the depth of this injury crisis that results in us not having much choice to pick, despite having the theoretical depth that most teams could only dream of.
Moving on to midfield injuries, people keep slating Keita and Shaqiri as injury-prone. Shaqiri, perhaps, but he’s still managed to be an option for much of his career here at Liverpool so far, albeit mainly as a squad player rather than a starter, which was what he was brought in for. Keita never missed many games for his previous teams, just like Matip, but once he came in, he suffered one serious injury, recovered to slowly play his part in the team, before suffering an impact injury against Barcelona. He then goes on to have an interrupted season by minor strains, but still managing to play enough games to have contributed meaningfully to a league win. He gets injured, barely recovers in time, before being put in to play two full international games by an idiot manager, which then ruins him again. As far as we know right now, he’s technically not really injured, but just being put on an extended rehabilitation programme to avoid any recurrence of such an injury. Oxlade-Chamberlain is yet another one whom although you could argue doesn’t have the best injury record, his injuries tend to be mainly because of his playing style, which leaves him more prone to impact injuries from players interrupting his runs forward.
All of these players, you couldn’t really argue to be sicknotes unless you only thought about it superficially. And yet, their injuries aren’t losses just for the ability to select them, but also losses for the team morale, especially when you see very obviously the absence of your teammates from training. Given the way that we play, having the bodies to substitute in when someone starts to fatigue is very important, but we have had to ration that this season since there really aren’t enough bodies there. For all the people questioning the substitution of Jones in this game, this is his first full season as an integrated member of the first team, at the age of 19. As good and talented as he may be, and for all the supposed “energy of youth” that people might claim that he should have, he’s still not going to have the fully developed physicality that he was going up against yesterday. Sure, he might not have been showing it yet, but I am guessing that the management team did not want to risk him being physically and mentally fatigued, giving away goals (for all the good that did us in the end) and getting blamed for it, just like against West Bromwich Albion. Bringing him off was a good idea, since it would also inject fresh energy into the game.
Bringing Shaqiri on was also a good idea, since City’s team isn’t that tall, and they weren’t dominating us in the air. Rather, he would provide better movement in tight spaces than someone like Origi, since he’s more mobile and has better acceleration. It was the right move, and was only undone by the two goals. In fact, so far this season, given the limitations that we had to play with, our setups have been right for the vast majority of the time, just that we haven’t executed them well enough.
I mentioned on TIA a few seasons ago, when we were experiencing similar problems in our play, that often when we are on song, we’re not passing to players, but into space. And we do so with precision, that often unlocks teams, not necessarily by quick but rather by smart movement. And such play requires consistency of both passing and moving, which requires that we continually try it, and execute it successfully. My theory of what’s changed this season is the increased manhandling of our front 3 gone unpunished by the officials, means that they cannot reach the balls, which makes the passers instead cut their passes shorter, which means that the passes are easier to intercept. The increased physical and mental fatigue also contribute to less accuracy in passing, which completely undermines the way we play. The games in which we’ve done well recently, were won mainly on shorter passes rather than longer passes, and faster movement, which is a slight change in the way we played early in the season, as well as for much of last season, where we were relying on slightly longer balls by Henderson, Wijnaldum, and Fabinho. The cross-field passing is also less accurate, with the prime example of good execution being Salah’s goal against City at Anfield last season. This season, instead of Robertson being able to deliver a one-touch cross after receiving the ball however, more often than not the players end up running backward and losing any opportunity created by the pass. Klopp alluded to this in a recent match, when he discussed how Alexander-Arnold was not executing the pre-game instructions to make his passes shorter and attempt fewer wild crosses.
For all that people bang on about Klopp’s supposed failings tactically, or us not buying the new flavour of the month, the only way we can fix this is through hard work on the training ground, afforded by a break in the schedule. Unfortunately we don’t have the luxury of the break, so we have to somehow squeeze in re-training all these fundamentals in the tight schedule of recovery between matches and training. I have a feeling that if we had an extended break, we would have the opportunity to work on such things, which would also improve our positioning for second balls, and therefore in a sense improve our luck a little.
But our luck can only be improved so much by us, when we’re basically facing massive calamities every other game, like goalkeeping howlers (I’m really still harping on Pickford mauling Van Dijk here) or refereeing idiocy/bias. I do think the management team knows what needs to be done, just that we are really catching no breaks this season. All this knee-jerking going on in the past few match threads is also really annoying, with all the posters who only come out of the woodwork when we’re doing poorly to whine and bitch about particular favourite scapegoats. Had that been Adrian or Karius out there for example, they would have been absolutely crucified. For all that claim that it’s because Alisson has earned himself enough credit, it’s only because there already exists a blinkered view of the others. Karius was doing fairly well and improving until the Champions League Final. Given that he is very much a confidence player, it was basically impossible to come back from that. He also did not have the benefit of a mega price tag that Alisson had. Alisson is indeed better than Karius, even if marginally, since that fine margin is what makes a huge difference in some games, but the difference in treatment of him is staggering. Alisson doesn’t even have the excuse of a concussion, just two massive brainfarts. And he already has a prior history of those. Firmino has had many rubbish games this season alone, and yet he’s afforded plenty of time, because he wears his heart out on his sleeve. I genuinely do love him, and I think he’s central to our team more so than Mané and Salah, but when he’s playing poorly (and he has for pretty much most of this season), he stinks up the pitch worse than what Origi has done in his recent games (although less than in some of the earlier games). Minamino has been mostly ineffectual when he’s come on, as much as i think he can be really great as a Firmino replacement, but somehow he’s been talked up as better than Origi in our team already. Now, despite being the flavour of the month earlier this season, Thiago is starting to come in for a lot of unwarranted criticism. The only thing you can really blame him for is some really poor tackling at times, but apart from that he’s been starved of options to pass to, and also he’s been great at managing despite being booked.
I understand the pain and frustration we’re all feeling as a fanbase, but really, the solutions are not simple. Just as the team has to battle through that and stand strong mentally, we too as fans ought not to lose the plot. I for one believe that City might be odds on to win the title, but you can’t rule us out just yet (in fact, City did come back from an even worse margin to win the title in 10-11, far later in the season). And even if we don’t win it this season, even if we don’t even make the Champions League, the experience gained will be invaluable in the next few seasons, especially for players like Jones, Gomez (less so given his absence from training and playing) and Alexander Arnold. There will be many times ahead when we will be playing worse than we should be, and getting poor results on the pitch, and this experience gained should give them the ability to lead the team through such times when we encounter them again.
