Identity crisis

I can’t be bothered analysing last night’s game, it’s been rinse and repeat this last couple of months and we’ve all discussed our flaws at length. Instead, I want to touch on something I was talking about on a recent thread – what exactly is our style of play these days?

Klopp made his name in management with his instantly recognisable “heavy metal football” style. High intensity pressing from the front and his teams were by far the best at transitions. Both at Dortmund and in his early days with us, Klopp’s style was instantly recognisable, thrilling to watch and allowed his teams to punch above their weight, both domestically and on the European stage.

Normally, if you had a manager that was at a club for a decade, in which time they had great success and you asked a fan what the best display of their tenure was, it would be very difficult to pick out one game but for me during Klopp’s time with us, I actually find it an easy question and no, it wasn’t the Barca comeback which was ‘just’ a crazy game on one of those magical Anfield nights in Europe. No, for me it was Leicester away when we won 4-0. We went to the King Power to face a good Leicester team who were chasing top four that season and put in a practically perfect display. Our pressing game was so on point and Leicester just couldn’t deal with it. They couldn’t get out their half or retain any kind of possession and Vardy who had been something of a scourge for us in those years, was reduced to being a virtual spectator. It really was the perfect away performance, we scored four goals and were in complete control of the game from the first to last whistle. A well oiled machine that was simply purring.

At some point however, we decided to move away from our extreme pressing game and try and evolve into a more possession based team and for me, it’s never truly worked. Our passing out from the back is simply horrible and pretty much always has been. The only times we’ve ever really been half decent at it was when Thiago was playing and that has unfortunately been all too infrequent during his spell at the club. When he’s not playing, we’re awful at it. Now I fully understand the principle of teams wishing to play out from the back – retaining possession, precise football as opposed to the percentage game of long diagonals etc. You have to be good at it though, otherwise you just invite pressure onto yourselves and greatly increase the likelihood of errors in dangerous parts of the pitch. We see it every week with the lesser teams trying to play like Pep’s Barca team, when they’re simply not capable of it and end up conceding a tonne of self inflicted goals over the course of the season, all in the name of the manager’s so called “footballing principles”. They’re a great thing to have but they’re also something of a luxury that only a few managers can really afford to have. Burnley are a great example. Easy on the eye but what’s the point in that if you’re going to get relegated at the end of it? We saw it with Postecoglou this season, refusing to alter that crazy high line, even when they went down to NINE men at Chelsea, who ended up sticking four past them. Somehow footballing principles seem as or more important than results to some managers and it makes no sense.

We didn’t have to worry about that nonsense for a while. Our system and structure so defined and our boys so well drilled that you could have put us in any strip and our team still would have been instantly recognisable. Not now though. We pass aimlessly around the back 5, either inviting pressure or giving a team plenty time to get into their low block defensive shape. We then get it into midfield who also just pass it around aimlessly, side to side in front of said low block with no penetration at all. Now that was understandable when our midfield consisted of the technically limited Fabinho, Hendo the crab and Gini. There’s been little improvement in that regard this season though with more technical players and it generally ends up with us passing it back to either Van Dijk or Trent to hit a 40 yard diagonal, which we could’ve done in the first place and saved ourselves ten minutes of one of my biggest hates in football – possession for possession’s sake! There has been an improvement in goals from midfield this season but it’s generally been more a piece of individual brilliance or a long range strike, rather than finishing off an excellent passing move.

Now, I understand the need to constantly evolve your game but we were once the one team in Europe that nobody wanted to play, everyone knew you were going to be in for your toughest game of the season. I always remember a game where we spanked Arsenal and Dani Ceballos saying after the game that he’d never played a time like us. His exact words were “They take the air from you”. We exhausted teams. Over the past 2-3 seasons however, we’ve morphed into this team that is one of the easiest to play against. Everyone knows we struggle to break down a low block and everyone also knows that the long diagonal down our right flank will be on all night long, so get nine men behind the ball and leave your fastest player loitering around the halfway line and you’ll both frustrate us and create big chances of your own over the course of 90 minutes.

So what exactly HAVE we become? We don’t press with anything like the same intensity and when we do win the ball back high up the pitch, rather than look to create a shooting opportunity as quickly as possible with 2-4 incisive passes the way we once did, we more often than not pass it backwards to retain possession and the whole aimless. sideways passing starts all over again. We have loads of possession but don’t create any chances with it, our defensive structure is an absolute shambles and we have an £85 million centre forward that we really have no idea what to do with. That’s not evolution. It’s more like self harm.

Who cares if you’re predictable? It only matters if people can stop it. Everyone knew what Pep’s Barca were going to do but couldn’t stop it. Everyone knew what the Spain team that won back to back Euros, with a World Cup sandwiched in between were going to do but couldn’t stop it. Sure teams can try and plan for you but as Mike Tyson famously said “Everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the face” and it’s true. If you’re the best at something, people can plan all they want but more often than not, you’ll still come out on top. We were hands down the best in the world at the high press and transitions. We used to score more often than our opponents did from THEIR corners! Those trademark counter attacks, 3-4 incisive passes and goal in the blink of an eye. When was the last time we did that? We’ve abandoned what we were best at, to try and focus on what we’ve never been good at – short passing and possession based build up play. We’ve got the possession bit down, we just don’t do anything with it.

Anyway, that became a lot more long winded than I intended so apologies to any of you still awake having persevered to read this far. It just occurred to me the other day however, when I read about the new manager needing to be comfortable with our style of play that is coached to all age levels at the club and I thought to myself what exactly is that style? We’ve ended up as an in-between team. We kind of do our pressing thing but not like we used to and we seem to have completely lost our ability to counter attack, which doesn’t seem to be an important tactic to us anymore, as it once was. We’re not a possession team either though. We’re a team that has a lot of possession but we’re not a possession team the way City and Arsenal are. They play their way up the pitch in little triangles with short, sharp, accurate passing that takes their opponents out the game, regularly playing through the middle to score their goals. We don’t do that, our passing is horrible at times and I can’t remember the last time we played through the middle and passed our way to a goal through slow possession build up and even if we did, Darwin would be offside anyway. Our goals in the Klopp era have always predominantly come from our wide forwards making runs from outside to in, between fullback and CB. That’s why we’ve always played with a false 9 – to drag a CB out of position to free up space for our wide forwards to run into. Now we’ve got Darwin in there, none of them have any idea what to do and so it just becomes trying to create something for yourself when you get in an attacking area, hence Salah and Diaz constantly just running into traffic.

To summarise then, in my opinion we’ve completely lost our identity as a team, when just 3 or so years ago it was probably the strongest and most recognisable in the world. I was devastated when the news broke but as this season has gone on, I feel it’s probably the right time for Jurgen to be moving on and a new energy brought into the club.

Slot has a big job on his hands but he’s been left with some excellent tools to do it. First things first though, we need that clear identity back. Oh and for the love of god, sort out that defence. Walk on!!