We’re just a scant few weeks from having watched LFC lift its first Premier League trophy in 30 years. Ordinarily, the players would either be Instagramming their naked, muscled torsos from vacations from various points across the globe, or would be proudly representing their mother countries in various international competitions.
This time, instead, another Premier League season begins.
This time, so much is different.
Over the course of the previous two seasons, LFC have amassed 196 league points — breaking club records for points totals in both seasons. They have won the most coveted trophy in all of world football — the UEFA Champions League. They have also earned the European Supercup and the Club World Cup championships. Finally, after missing out by a single point the year before, last season the Reds also ran away from the field early to earn their 19th English top-flight title, and first in the Premier League — although only after an agonizing additional wait imposed by a global pandemic.
Now, after 24 months of maintaining the robotic, obsessive focus necessary to achieve such heights, the Reds must begin again. But this time, they have already achieved their goal.
We saw what happened after they clinched the title with seven matches remaining. The edge was gone. They had climbed the mountain, and their brains decided to stop giving the signal for the extra little adrenaline kick that had kept them at the top for so long. There was no conscious relaxation, and no reduction in intentional effort. But their subconscious let them down.
Now, having achieved their goal, they must somehow recapture their edge. They must trick themselves into believing that winning more trophies is equally important to winning the first ones. Having had only a few weeks to celebrate, they must begin the war again. As Jürgen puts it, they must again “attack the title.”
This is a huge psychological grind.
Along with the internal challenge of resetting their intensity, the Reds will also face new external challenges. For two seasons, they have rolled over their opponents using essentially one consistent tactical framework. But that enviable consistency inevitably brings with it a dreaded predictability. Opponents know how LFC play, and they know the best ways to try and stop them. Actually managing to stop the Reds — even armed with a well-documented plan for doing so — remains hugely difficult. But the predictability of the Reds play makes it at least a bit easier.
You and I recently discussed whether LFC were likely to implement new tactical systems or formations this season. I argued yes, in large part because I thought it would give the team ways to optimize tactics to fit different combinations of players on the pitch. You suggested that forcing all players to fit as cogs into the well-oiled 4-3-3 framework would keep the output most consistent.
Now, we have more data about which direction LFC will actually take on this issue. In the Community Shield, LFC started in a 4-3-3, then shifted to a 4-2-3-1 with 30 minutes left in the match. The following week in an exhibition against Blackpool, the Reds played 4-2-3-1 (or some variant of it — such as 4-2-1-3) for the entire match. Perhaps even more significantly on this point, Klopp’s first lieutenant — assistant Pep Ljinders — recently told the media that “it is up to us to remain unpredictable” in order to meet challenges posed by opponents that have geared their play to stop LFC from playing how they want to play. For example, LFC’s opponents now often focus on stopping LFC’s fullbacks. So, Ljinders says, the Reds must develop less predictable ways of attacking. Given the use of different formations over the last few weeks, it strongly appears that using multiple formations will be part of the Reds’ effort to “remain unpredictable.”
But learning and implementing new tactical systems, after having one system programmed into your muscle memory for years, is a grind.
On a related point, LFC will also face the external challenge of having the proverbial “target” painted even larger on their backs. Arguably, at some level this has been true for a long time. For virtually every opponent, beating LFC has always been a big win, even when Liverpool have had “down” seasons. But now, having won the Premier League by 18 points, and having clinched the title at an earlier point than any team in history, the target will be painted bigger and brighter than ever. Perhaps most importantly, last season’s drubbing could serve to re-sharpen the focus of LFC’s chief rivals at Manchester City. Pep Guardiola and his boys could well be galvanized to show Liverpool who’s REALLY the boss of this league.
Facing these external challenges week after week is a grind.
This time, the full season will be played out over only nine months, instead of the usual 10 months. As they normally do, players will play in four club competitions for LFC, broken up by annoying “breaks” to play for their national teams. The compressed schedule will mean that, more often than not, they will be playing twice a week. For nine months, the games will follow one after another, with relentless consistency. Premier League on Saturday. League Cup on Wednesday. Premier League Sunday. Champions League Wednesday. Premier League Saturday. Rinse and repeat.
This is both a physical and mental grind like none they have previously faced. No football squad has ever faced the levels of physical intensity that teams will face this season if they are competing in Europe, along with their domestic competitions.
Inevitably, as the compressed season grinds on, injuries will mount for every team. Substitutes will fill roles that no one anticipated. Team chemistries will be disrupted. Coaches will forced to re-engineer tactical plans to adapt to changing circumstances.
All of this will grind on the players, the coaching staff, and the supporters.
Come May of 2021, how will LFC emerge from all of this grinding?
We know that repeated application of a grinder can render tools into a useless collection of shards and dust. But, wielded by an expert craftsman, a grinder can instead be used to sharpen a well-designed tool.
There’s no doubt that LFC begin this season with the best “tool” — the squad that has played better than any team in the world over the last 24 months. They also start with one of the finest “craftsman” — our hero Jürgen Klopp, who’s proven time and again that he can guide his team to overcome challenges that seem insurmountable.
This season will be a huge grind. Don’t be surprised if we emerge at the end of it as an even sharper-honed tool than we already are.
It’s difficult to know what City and LFC’s other league rivals will do this season. And it’s beyond our control, for the most part. But, I believe Jürgen and the boys will succeed. I think they will stumble more often, particularly in the first half of the season. But, as the grind wears on, I believe our quality will shine through relative to our competition. I think we will again manage to earn more than 90 points. I think that’s likely to be enough to reclaim the title, although it certainly might not be.
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What are the biggest question marks going into the season? What holes remain to be filled? There aren’t that many. This machine is not broken.
We filled one hole that has loomed for several seasons, when we purchased Kostas Tsimikas as a backup for Andy Robertson. As with any other transfer, only time will tell whether Tsimikas is a success in that role. But, his past performance, along with early signs from his preseason appearances, suggest that he will be a very good fit.
But with Dejan Lovren leaving, we are now down to only three senior center backs in the squad. Fortunately, at the moment, all three of them are healthy. Nonetheless, over the course of this grind of a season, we will definitely need a fourth center back. At some points, we could easily need a fifth. At the moment, our fourth center back option is Fabinho. This is fine in one important sense — he’s plenty good enough at that position to serve in that role. But it may not be fine in another sense. When Fabinho’s playing CB, he’s NOT filling his best position — in defensive central midfield — where we probably need him most. I would hope and expect for us to pick up another CB before the close of the transfer window.
Of course, the highest profile personnel questions are the related pair of: a) will Gini leave for Barcelona? and b) will Thiago Alcántara replace him? I think it’s likely that both of those will happen, although it still appears almost equally probable that either or both events might NOT occur. I think LFC would probably ideally prefer that both of them stayed in place for this season, so that LFC could snatch up Thiago as a free agent at the end of the year (probably signing him to a pre-contract in January), and Gini could leave at the end of his contract. No transfer fees, no fuss, no muss. Of course, the players’ agents would prefer that some type of transfer fee gets paid — and that would be in the economic interests of the players as well. So, we’ll see. If Klopp really wants Thiago, and Thiago and his agents successfully convince LFC that he could end up going elsewhere unless LFC ponies up a transfer fee now, then that might push us in that direction. Similarly, if Gini walks out on us now, we would need someone like Thiago a whole lot more — it would be worth it at that point to spend the transfer fee. Plus, at that point we would have received a transfer fee for Wijnaldum. Again, this could go either way.
If we get Thiago, I think this will help us be less predictable and have more of a cutting edge. But, the flip side is that it’s likely to make us a bit more open defensively. Gini is positionally magnificent, and a key to our success. We will miss him, even if his replacement does a lot of things that Gini did not.
Fortunately, we appear to be in very good shape in central midfield, so long as Gini doesn’t leave without replacement. Lallana is out, but I expect Curtis Jones to get all of his minutes, and I think he’s an upgrade over late-career Lallana. I won’t say much here about my favorite player, since I jinxed him last season. Obviously, we won’t know until the end of this season, at the earliest, whether Naby has overcome his injury tendencies. But I will say that injuries are likely the only thing that can hold him back from becoming the force that I’ve always known he could be in a Jürgen Klopp team. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain faces a similar test. He’s not yet gotten back to his pre-injury heights, and one can reasonably worry that he may never do so. But, he will play an important role even if he never gets back to that same lofty, pre-injury standard. Henderson and Fabinho are critical, core components. We suffer when either of them are unavailable, although Hendo was outstanding when replacing Fabinho as the defensive mid for several months last year. I think the team is far more dependent on Henderson that it seems like we SHOULD be. Hopefully he has another great season. Milner will continue to play an important role as a leader in the locker room, and he will still often be on the pitch as a substitute in tight situations with points on the line.
Finally, I think we could use another attacker — especially a left-sided attacker who could substitute for Sadio Mané’s role. I expect Takumi Minamino to get a lot of minutes this season, but I think his best position is in the middle of the pitch — in the Firmino role (in whatever formation we happen to be playing). If we don’t get another attacker, I suspect that Taki will, at times, play in all three of the forward positions in the 4-3-3, and all of the attacking midfield positions in the 4-2-3-1. But, ideally, we would bring in a left-sided player with a similar skill set to Mané and Salah. A speedster who has the skill to finish and to create and interchange with others. Right now, the strongest link we have to such an attacker is to Watford’s Ismaila Sarr. Watford was relegated, so he’s on the market. Sarr is right-footed, and has more often played on the right wing throughout his career. But, he’s also occasionally played left wing, and I’m confident that’s where he would usually find himself if he came to us. He’s already good friends with his international teammate Sadio Mané. He’s got the right skill sets, although they need further development.
Tactically, as we have discussed previously, I think we will see LFC more often attacking through the middle of the pitch, rather than relying quite so heavily on delivery from the fullbacks out wide. Look for Robertson and TAA’s assists totals to go down. Look for more through passes from the likes of Naby, Taki, Bobby, and AOC. And, yes, occasionally from Henderson, Gini, and Fabs as well.
It also appears that, when pressured high, we will be trying to expand the width of the pitch by dropping a central midfielder into a third CB spot, and playing with a 3-4-3 formation until we can break the press.
Defensively, I suspect we will look mostly the same.
