Following Liverpool's 1 draw Manchester City, social media has been flooded by claims that Jeremy Doku came out on top in his battle with Trent Alexander-Arnold. However, a proper examination of that game, and a look his season to date shows that not only is he defending well, but his new role in the team is making Liverpool a far more dangerous proposition.
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00:00 (intro music)
00:03 Hello everybody, Adam Cleary from 442 here, and today we are going to talk about Trent Alexander-Arnold.
00:10 Is there a 25 year old on the planet as culturally divisive despite being at the very bleeding edge of his industry?
00:18 Whose every working moment seems to invite as much analysis from his older fans as it does obsession from his younger fans.
00:27 Yes, yes there is one, yes but Trent is second.
00:30 But after yet another weekend where we've had to sit and watch loads of compilations on the internet with the caption
00:35 "LOL Trent can't defend"
00:37 I've had enough, I've just, I've had enough. It is time to give the man the respect he deserves.
00:43 (ding)
00:45 Alright so I'll just start by addressing the Liverpool fans in the room.
00:49 If you heard that last bit about the compilations being like "what are you on about, he's played really well, he's got that goal"
00:54 I don't know how to tell you this, the narrative around that game has been that Jeremy Doku had his life.
00:59 And I mean yes, okay, he did get dribbled around once or twice and Doku did have the most successful take-ons in the Premier League since like 2021 or something
01:08 which is obviously, that's really good but that is just such a surface level reading of the game, I don't know where to begin.
01:14 Well actually no, I do. This is Jeremy Doku's dribbles, successful dribbles map provided kindly by Opta for that game.
01:22 You can see, that is a lot of dribbles. In fact just to show you how many it is, we will also include every other dribble that a Manchester City player did in that game
01:31 and as you can see, it's pretty much all him.
01:34 So it's very easy to look at that and just think "well whoever was playing right back to Liverpool must have had a shocker"
01:39 but that's quite a misleading graph because Doku had an excellent game, no doubt, but he didn't really create any excellent chances.
01:47 In fact the best chance he created in the entire game was when they got Liverpool on a really quick break,
01:52 Alexander-Arnold was stuck up the other end of the pitch and he was up against McAllister.
01:56 So allow me to just mix this graph up ever so slightly, okay, we'll get rid of the Jeremy Doku thing and instead we look at this.
02:03 It is every single positive defensive contribution Trent Alexander-Arnold made in that game,
02:10 in his successful tackles, blocks, clearances and interceptions.
02:13 And if you would like some context for this, it is the most out of any single player in that game.
02:19 So Trent, who can't defend, remember that's his whole thing, he actually individually defended the best of any player in that game.
02:27 Which is especially impressive given that's not his job anymore.
02:32 He regained possession for his team more than any other player on the pitch and he popped up right at the end to score a frankly sublime equalising goal.
02:40 On what planet, I ask you, is that not a great performance?
02:44 You see the real problem here is that there is a narrative about Trent Alexander-Arnold.
02:48 And it's one mostly of his own making, yes because he was defensively suspect in a number of games last season,
02:53 but now it doesn't matter how well he does defend, if any left-sided attacker playing against Liverpool has a good afternoon,
03:00 it's gonna be because Trent can't defend.
03:02 But JĂŒrgen Klopp's not blind, he's not an idiot, he saw what we all saw over the last couple of years.
03:07 Now teams started to try and target him, he's not just leaving him in the team because he's got no choice,
03:13 he has adapted the system so that the defending part of this isn't really his job.
03:18 Like here are the average positions for this Liverpool team against Manchester City.
03:22 And yeah you can see there is a yawning chasm in the right back area.
03:26 And when you're playing against a team that's got Jeremy Doku, that seems insane.
03:30 Why would you do that, why would you invite them in like that?
03:33 And that's because he's worth it. What you can get out of Trent Alexander-Arnold by having him in this area instead of this area is beneficial.
03:42 It's not easy to do by the way, that's why there were a lot of teething problems last year,
03:46 why they're quite susceptible to an early goal.
03:48 This season is putting a lot of strain on Alexis McAllister by the way,
03:52 who is now one yellow card this season off equaling his entire total from last season.
03:57 But again, the positives outweigh the negatives.
04:00 So what are those positives? Well first and foremost it puts Trent Alexander-Arnold,
04:05 a generational talent with the ball at his feet, into an area of the pitch where he can now control a game.
04:13 And we've talked about it in other videos so I won't get bogged down with the whole formation thing,
04:16 but Liverpool this season they are occasionally trying to do the three box three system
04:21 that Man City and Arsenal and a few others enjoyed so much success with last season.
04:25 They're employing it by having Trent Alexander-Arnold come across from right back and the defence shuffles round accordingly.
04:31 If you haven't had the misfortune of hearing me drone on endlessly about this system and the whole box midfield thing,
04:37 it's that whole John Stone stepping out from the back thing with Manchester City.
04:41 The idea is it gives you four players in central midfield against teams that mostly only ever have three
04:46 so you can control the game and you've still got coverage everywhere else.
04:49 It's just, look, click that, explain better in that.
04:54 Anyway, the whole thinking behind the system, the whole reason Jurgen Klopp wants Liverpool to play this way
04:59 is because Trent Alexander-Arnold is one of the few players in the world who has it up here enough
05:05 to control Premier League games regularly and you can't do that from right back.
05:11 And if we look at his pass map from that Man City game, you can see that he's primarily still on the right-hand side of the pitch
05:17 but he's a little bit further over than you might expect and he's also not afraid to just start go roaming to get on the ball
05:23 and to do things but not the passes he makes tell you the story, the passes he receives.
05:28 So a progressive pass, you've heard me talk about them before, they're a pass that's basically a nice forward-thinking,
05:33 attacking, incisive ball designed to move everything closer to your opponent's goal.
05:38 They're the kind of passes you want to be making.
05:40 Two seasons ago, there were few right-backs in world football receiving as many progressive passes as Trent Alexander-Arnold.
05:47 He was in the top 20% in all of Europe for that.
05:51 And that's because in their old system, there was a lot of room for Alexander-Arnold here.
05:54 Mo Salah, he likes to play nice and close to the goal.
05:56 So Alexander-Arnold will either try and get to the byline to provide a bit of width or do his Beckham thing
06:01 where he sits in that sort of like right half space, just kind of about here and puts crosses into the box.
06:06 So naturally, all his teammates were looking to find him in these areas with progressive passes.
06:12 But now if we look at the numbers for this season, he receives less than half that many.
06:17 And just his not really being in this position anymore really has impacted Liverpool's overall style of play.
06:22 Like if I said to you, guess which team in the Premier League put the most crosses in last season,
06:27 you probably wouldn't think Liverpool, but it was, they were top.
06:30 But this season, and I mean, they are still pretty high up because they're good at stretching teams and getting width,
06:35 and it's always a good route to go, especially when you've got someone like Nunes in the middle.
06:38 But they've dropped to sixth. They just crossed the ball considerably less.
06:41 And that is just almost entirely Alexander-Arnold.
06:44 If you look at this absolutely brilliant graph they put on the Athletic website,
06:48 where his chances have come from over the last couple of seasons, you can see now,
06:52 primarily his chances are coming from this middle area of the pitch here,
06:56 when previously they were coming from here.
06:59 But the real, real thing you have to understand about what's going on here is if you just purely look at the numbers
07:03 and analyse them side by side, Alexander-Arnold is regressing as an attacking influence in that Liverpool team.
07:10 And if we just put up all his numbers from two seasons ago, when Liverpool were never experimenting with any of this,
07:15 and compare them to this season, you can see his numbers are down.
07:20 He's getting way less assist. His key passes are down. His passes in the final third,
07:24 and the penalty area are down. His crosses into the penalty area, obviously, they are way, way down.
07:29 So weirdly, Trenton Alexander-Arnold is a less effective attacking proposition.
07:35 And yet, and this is the entire point I'm trying to make in this video, for all those numbers,
07:40 might suggest that Trent Alexander-Arnold is somehow a less effective attacking entity,
07:45 if we compare some similar stats for Liverpool themselves, they are a more effective attacking entity.
07:52 Goals are up. Shots are up. Shots on target are up. XG is up.
07:57 Every single attacking metric you would care to look at, Liverpool are far more dangerous this season than they were last season.
08:04 And that is because they are no longer using Trent Alexander-Arnold as a chance creator.
08:08 Primarily, they're using him as a tempo setter.
08:12 The reason his numbers are down is because he's not the one making these last passes, these crosses, these incisive through balls.
08:18 He's the one setting up the play and dictating how the team does that instead.
08:24 And that is why Jurgen Klopp will not give a sh*t how many successful dribbles Jeremy Doku had in that game.
08:30 That's literally the trade-off. You're inviting opposition teams to get down that left-hand side
08:36 and let tricky wingers or mercurial playmakers do their stuff there. It doesn't matter.
08:41 That's the risk/reward. He knows, and is already being proved right in the numbers,
08:46 that over the course of a season, if you vacate that area, if you leave it slightly open to allow Alexander-Arnold to play in the middle here,
08:54 you will create way more chances than you will concede.
08:58 Think back to Liverpool under Klopp at their absolute best, when they used to press the life out of teams,
09:03 when they used to go all the way up onto the halfway line.
09:05 They left so much space in behind, and they did concede goals through that high line.
09:11 But they also scored a billion goals in a season, and won the Champions League, and won the Premier League.
09:17 There's always a risk and reward with Klopp, and this is that now.
09:21 I just don't ever want to hear, "Oh, Trent can't defend again," because A) we've already proved that actually can quite well,
09:27 pretty handily, when he puts his mind to it, and B) it's not his job.
09:31 That's not what they're asking him to do. That's not what his role in the team is.
09:36 It takes a town to raise a baby. It takes a team to successfully defend.
09:41 So next time you see a left winger practically on a sun lounger on that side against Liverpool,
09:46 ask yourself why no one else is there.
09:48 And you've got to remember, I'm saying all this as a man who has literally done videos on this channel,
09:53 just scratching my head, asking, "Why doesn't Trent Alexander-Arnold just defend better?
09:57 Why doesn't he focus on the basics a bit more? What on earth does Jurgen Klopp think he's doing?"
10:01 And as it turns out, he thought they were doing this.
10:04 They were going through all the painful adjustment months last season,
10:07 getting up to speed with the system and the formation and what was being asked of everybody,
10:10 so they would see rewards this season.
10:13 And those rewards are a genuine title challenge and going to the Etihad, where they usually get beat,
10:18 and not getting beat.
10:20 So my advice now, as it usually is, would just be don't really doubt Jurgen Klopp.
10:25 Like, even when he looks like he's absolutely lost his mind, he does tend to know what he's doing.
10:30 He's quite good at this.
10:31 And speaking of being good at this, if you thought I was any good at this, then firstly, why?
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11:02 C-L-E-R-Y. I need to build a graphic for that.
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11:09 Why not click one of those? What's the worst that could happen?
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11:16 I've been Adam Cleary. That was Trent Alexander-Arnold.
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11:23 I think that's everything. Bye.