The world feels like a different place after a 9-nil victory on Saturday.
Yes, the opposition helped. Bournemouth are a promoted side that had already been smacked down hard by both Manchester City and Arsenal. Despite their opening day victory against Aston Villa, Bournemouth don’t look ready for the Premier League. And, this morning I learned that Bournemouth management apparently agree. They sacked manager Scott Parker just 48 hours after Liverpool demolished his team on Saturday.
But, as they say, you can only beat what’s in front of you. And boy, did Liverpool do that. They beat Bournemouth with gusto, intensity, cohesion, flair, and a whole lot of deadly finishing. It felt like we got our old team back.
Saturday Was Not Getting the Old Liverpool Back — It Was Getting the New Liverpool Clicking
I find this feeling of “getting the old team back” a bit ironic, because I actually believe that this Bournemouth match should instead be described as “getting the new team clicking.”
As I described in the last post on “What’s Wrong with Liverpool?,” Jürgen Klopp and his coaching staff have changed Liverpool’s tactical approach this season in important ways. I believe that the players are still getting settled in that new tactical system. They are being asked to go to different spots on the pitch, to create spaces in different areas, in the hope that our attackers will exploit those new spaces.
In our first three matches, Liverpool were tentative. We looked tired and like we lacked energy and intensity. But I believe this hesitancy was not about burn-out or any actual lack of emotional intensity. Instead, I believe that in our first three matches, our players were having to think too much. The players had not yet ingrained their new positional assignments and movement patterns into muscle memory. When players need to think before acting, this slows them down. When Liverpool is in possession, the passing is less sharp, and the tempo is dialed way back. \
When Liverpool are defending, the hesitancy means that our players are out of position at key transitional moments. If the opposition attacks directly and quickly, they can exploit this defensive hesitancy and create clear scoring opportunities. Manchester United did exactly that on repeated occasions.
I worried that the loss to Man United might actually exacerbate Liverpool’s hesitancy by amplifying the lack of muscle memory with a large dose of doubt and uncertainty. If the players are not confident that what they’re doing will work, they will hesitate even more. For that reason, I wondered whether Klopp might even throw out the new tactical system and return to the familiar — the system that’s been in place at Liverpool since at least 2017-18.
Klopp Stuck to His New System Against Bournemouth
Klopp chose on Saturday to stick with the plan and continue with the new system. And, at least on Saturday, Liverpool’s players lost all hesitancy. They knew what they wanted to do, and they did it. Although Mo Salah was still starting from a very wide position, far from the goal, we saw Liverpool use the resulting spaces to create multiple great scoring opportunities in the penalty area. Although Salah himself failed to score, he still had two huge chances. He just missed them. By himself, Salah had 1.35 xG in the match — a huge total for any one player in a single match.
I think this success using the new system is very good news for the season, because I’m very hopeful that it marks the beginning of a new evolutionary stage in Liverpool’s attacking play. As fantastic as last season was, Liverpool still struggled to score against teams in cup finals. In those situations very smart opposition managers — in this instance it was Chelsea’s Thomas Tuchel and Real Madrid’s Carlo Ancelotti — had a lot of time to prepare to defend against Liverpool’s old system. Those clever opposition managers had five years worth of data about how Liverpool attack. That system is/was very difficult to stop. But, any system with any group of players will have weaknesses, and if you’re too predictable, the best teams will exploit those weaknesses.
Now, with Klopp & Co. putting a new system in place, opposition managers will need to rethink how best to defend against Liverpool. I’m very excited by how Liverpool are becoming less predictable, and I think we should see a clear benefit across the season, especially in big matches. Sometimes, especially across the first half of the season, we will continue to see growing pains. Our players did not magically absorb the new system into their muscle memory the night before facing Bournemouth. I’m confident that they still don’t know that new system even close to as well as they know the old one.
One Tactical Tweak We Saw Saturday: Bringing Díaz Farther Inside
Plus, clearly Klopp and the staff will be tweaking the new system as they go, and we saw evidence of at least one major tweak on Saturday against Bournemouth. While Mo Salah continued to stay wide until the attack reached its final stages, on the other side of the pitch Luis Díaz started from a much more central position than he had been in the first three matches. For most of the first three matches, Andy Robertson was cutting inside of Díaz. But on Saturday, Robertson was usually in his more familiar spot on the outside, and Díaz was cutting inside toward the goal. At least in that one match, that tweak worked a treat.
Tomorrow, we get to see whether Saturday’s match was really a new beginning, or instead more of a false dawn.
Newcastle Provides LFC With a Significant Challenge
Newcastle comes to Anfield on Wednesday as one of only five remaining undefeated teams. They currently sit in seventh place, two spots ahead of Liverpool. Newcastle have already managed to hold Manchester City to a draw — and they have been the only team to take points from the league champs so far. In that impressive performance, Newcastle picked City’s defense apart on multiple occasions. Newcastle scored three times from 2.1 xG. In the two games before that, City had not conceded a single goal. Across City’s three other matches this season (against West Ham, Bournemouth, and Crystal Palace), Guardiola’s defense has given up a combined total of 0.6 xG. Newcastle’s performance against City should give Liverpool plenty of pause.
Historically, Eddie Howe Has Had a Tough Time When Facing Liverpool
In past seasons I have belittled Newcastle manager Eddie Howe as being too idealistic in his tactical approach. While Howe was in charge at Bournemouth, his teams played pretty football. They passed it around with quick, one- and two-touch combinations. They pressed. Against most opponents, they had most of the possession. They were fun to watch. And, against most of the Premier League, Eddie Howe’s Bournemouth team was at least reasonably effective for most of that team’s five-year stretch in the league from 2015 through 2020.
However, Eddie Howe’s Bournemouth were almost never successful against Liverpool. Howe’s aggressive pressing and possession-based tactics play directly into the hands of Klopp’s teams. Liverpool loves to press, and loves to have space behind the defense into which they can attack quickly immediately after recovering the ball. Thus, when facing Klopp’s Liverpool, most managers adjust their tactical approach by sitting back, defending deeper, and allowing Liverpool to have most of the ball. Liverpool can’t press when they have possession, and parking the defensive bus closes off the spaces into which the Reds prefer to attack (and counter-attack).
Nonetheless, at least while he was at Bournemouth, Eddie Howe went against the grain when playing Liverpool. He stuck to his tactical ideals, and Bournemouth attempted to play essentially the same way against Liverpool as they would against Watford. As I’ve pointed out previously, after Howe got a win and a draw against LFC in Howe’s first two matches against the Reds, Liverpool crushed them by an aggregate score of 18-1 the next six times the teams met. And, in 2019-20, Bournemouth’s swashbuckling approach finally landed them back in the Championship.
At Newcastle, Howe Has Adopted a More Pragmatic and Direct Approach
But, I believe that Howe has come back to the Premier League at Newcastle with a more pragmatic, thoughtful, and direct approach against the Premier League’s big boys.
At the Etihad, when Howe’s team recovered possession, they often bypassed the midfield and sent the ball long toward the empty spaces behind Manchester City’s very high defensive line. This direct approach is far more effective against teams like City and Liverpool than the pretty, short-passing, possession-based tactics that Howe’s Bournemouth team typically employed.
Allan Saint-Maximin Is Key To Howe’s New, More Direct Tactics, But Is Nursing an Injury
The direct approach is particularly effective when you have a player like Newcastle’s Allan Saint-Maximin running at the opposition goal. Saint-Maximin is one of my favorite non-Liverpool players to watch. He is very fast, tremendously skillful, and he always plays like he’s having a blast. Tactically, Saint-Maximin provides a great outlet on the break because he runs into spaces down the left side of the pitch that are created when a team pushes its defensive line high. His skill and strength allow him to take control of long passes out of the air, and he also gets to a lot of so-called “second balls” — the deflected balls that are up for grabs after a long pass gets headed by one team or another.
Once Saint-Maximin has the ball, he is a bag of tricks. He’s flashier, and probably faster, than Sadio Mané. He’s not as skilled a finisher as Mané, but I believe he’s Mané’s equal in virtually every other aspect of his attacking game.
In short, Allan Saint-Maximin terrifies me.
Newcastle Have Nearly As Many Injury Difficulties As Liverpool
That’s the bad news. From a Liverpool perspective, the good news is that Saint-Maximin is currently nursing a sore hamstring, and he may not play tomorrow. We’ll see. Liverpool is really the perfect opponent for Saint-Maximin, and Howe will be very tempted to play him if he’s anywhere close to fit.
Newcastle have quite a few other important players who are also doubts for tomorrow’s game. Midfielder Bruno Guimaraes, who has probably been Newcastle’s best player over the last two seasons, is in the same boat as Saint-Maximin — he’s questionable for tomorrow’s match with a minor hamstring strain. Striker Callum Wilson has a more serious hamstring problem and is out tomorrow. Right back Kieran Trippier suffered some type of problem on Sunday against Wolves, but Howe reports that he “should be fine” for tomorrow. Center back Emil Krafth is out for the season following an ACL tear. And, new record signing Alexander Isak, a striker from Real Sociedad, is a doubt because his work permit has not yet been approved.
How Will Liverpool Set Up Tomorrow?
I’m guessing that Liverpool will go “same again” after Saturday’s performance, especially with our options so limited by injuries. That lineup looks like this:
Curtis Jones and Joël Matip both returned to training yesterday, so there’s a slight chance that one or both of them could start. But I doubt it. Meanwhile, apparently Diogo Jota should begin training again on Thursday, which is great news. And, Darwin Núñez will again be available for this weekend’s derby at Goodison Park. That kid’s going to be poked, prodded, and harassed by opposing defenders all season after he was goaded into the red card against Palace. Hopefully he can contain himself from here on out. Finally, Klopp said that Thiago will return to training “slightly later” than Jota.
This will be tough. I doubt we will keep a clean sheet, and we certainly won’t be outperforming our xG total by five goals again anytime soon.
I’ll go for a narrow 2-1 Liverpool victory.
Up the Mighty Reds!
