Liverpool are off to a winning start in the new format of the Champions League, coming from behind to beat AC Milan 3-1. But after a sloppy start where their opponents seemed to be playing through them with ease, Arne Slot made a very subtle change that helped them regain control. Having suffered similar spells of openness in the Premier League, Adam Clery looks at how The Reds new manager is adapting to his now job, and how his side are changing in the process.
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00:00Right, hello there everybody, Adam Cleary from 442 here, and the Champions League is
00:08back. Nobody quite understands it anymore, but it's back all the same. And to celebrate
00:13it being back, Liverpool went and got their apparently customary victory at the San Siro.
00:18I didn't know that was a thing, but anyway, within that game, we saw a whole lot about
00:23Arnaslott's side, what is good and what is bad. Now obviously I use bad in a very loose
00:28term, it's like his 5th or 6th game or something. Putting a microscope on him already would
00:33be absolutely insane, but if we did, and we peered into it, then we'd see this match was
00:39actually a pretty good microcosm of what he's trying to do with this Liverpool team, what
00:44is currently working for them, and what the challenges currently are. So yeah, this is
00:48that.
00:49Alright, so two things for you very quickly. First of all, I've had to redo the entire
00:56studio again, I think I might have accidentally bleached out my entire face with these lights,
01:01so if I have, sorry about that. I'm not just trying to make myself look 3 or 4 or 15 years
01:07younger. And second of all, Cody Gakpo. I thought this was like his best game he's ever
01:12had for Liverpool, and certainly the game he's had for Liverpool that is most like the
01:16games he tends to have for the Netherlands. But before we get into him, and like rub him
01:20down with the buttery oils of praise, I'm going to talk about something that wasn't
01:24as good.
01:25The biggest, in my opinion, the biggest teething issue that Liverpool have had so far under
01:30slot is how he wants them to press. Now if you have watched them either in the Premier
01:35League or just last night, you will know they still have that high press they became famous
01:40for under Jürgen Kopp. You see stuff like this all the time, when the team have the
01:44ball at the back, they really don't want them to play out, they try and win it high.
01:48And yet, while it is definitely still a small sample size, if we look at the numbers in
01:52the Premier League this season, they're not scoring particularly high for tackles won,
01:57for interceptions made, for getting the ball back in the opposition's third, or even just
02:02in the middle of the pitch. They're not doing it overly well, despite doing it a lot. And
02:06that is something you do have to point out when you look at these stats, because it can
02:09just be a representation of play style more than execution. Like you'll notice Chelsea
02:14are way down the bottom because Maresca hasn't got them playing that high up, and Tottenham
02:18are way at the top, not because they're the best at this, but because Orange Ball is so
02:22inherently front foot and get in their face. But regardless, anyway, I digress, Liverpool
02:27are trying to do this, they're just not doing it very well. And you saw in the opening minutes
02:31leading up to the goal the problems they're having with this, because Liverpool's pressing
02:35shape is this 4-2-4. The number 10 last night, that was Dominic Sapozlai, he goes up alongside
02:42the centre forward, and they have this very straight line. Now they're not the only team
02:46to do this, Man United do it as well, and they do it quite wide, but Liverpool like
02:50to do it incredibly, incredibly narrow. What they're trying to do is block off any passes
02:56into the middle of the pitch, the other two can jump up and support if anybody finds space
03:00behind them. They want to try and force teams out wide, so they can then use the touchline
03:04as another defender, and then swarm and try and win it back here. And not to mention the
03:09names of any other association football teams, but if you employ this style against, I don't
03:15know, top of my head, some regional rivals with an ageing number 6, who were they a dog,
03:20the RSPCA would have come and taken them away by now. It can be very good, you swarm them,
03:27you use your extra energy, you use the fact you're in a nice congested area, you win the
03:30ball back, and then you immediately go and score goals. But, on the other hand, if you
03:34come up against teams who are very good at playing through this kind of pressure, that
03:38have a lot of mobility in these areas of the pitch, and in particular have very aggressive
03:43wingers who will pin your full backs to stop them joining in, then you do have these two
03:49pockets of space that you can play in. And don't get me wrong, by the way, it's not like
03:53a rock-paper-scissors thing, like you use it against the right kind of team, you're
03:57going to win, and you use it against the wrong kind of team, you're going to lose. It's just
04:00that some opponents will ask a lot more of these four players in terms of their energy,
04:06their instinct, and their organisation. And because, as I am at pains to point out, we
04:11are still in the single figures of the Arneslot Reign, it's taken them a little while to get
04:17this together.
04:18In the opening minutes here, you can see that all four of these Liverpool players, they
04:21are committed to the press, they're trying to close down, they all sort of know which
04:25players they're supposed to be going for, but because they haven't quite got this nailed
04:29down yet, and Milan are good at playing through this kind of thing, that is a brilliant ball
04:34from the goalkeeper that completely blows the press open. And from there, Milan get
04:39in down that side, you can see the gap here between Alexander-Arnold and Salah, that's
04:43what they're targeting, they get a ball in down the channel and they nearly score from
04:47this. I mean, I say nearly score, it was offside this passage of play so it wouldn't have counted,
04:51but still, you can see exactly what it is they're doing, the areas they're targeting
04:55and why Liverpool are vulnerable to that. And it was by targeting that exact area that
05:00Milan get their goal, because you can see again they're trying to put the squeeze on
05:03the goalkeeper, they're trying to cut off these angles into the centre of the pitch,
05:07but the full-back just goes and stands in the huge gap that leaves. It's a really nice
05:12clipped ball into him because he's standing so far behind the line of the press, that
05:16then forces Simakas to bolt forward to try and put a bit of pressure on the ball, he
05:21gets done and Christian Pulisic is in. There was almost an identical chance to this for
05:26Nottingham Forest in the league game as well, like it's far more sort of condensed, but
05:30you can see the full-back has gone and stood in this gap between Alexander-Arnold and Salah.
05:36It's played into him, he can receive and then another little sort of one-two pulls
05:40the full-back out of position and they're in down that side, although this time nothing
05:44really comes of it. And so, oh no, it's like five minutes into the game and you're a goal
05:48down and your opponent has your system more or less figured out. Like Milan's wide players
05:53were pinning Liverpool's full-backs, stopping them pushing on, that meant that Milan's full-backs
05:57could then go and sit in these spaces and because the goalkeeper's very good with the
06:00ball, either he was finding them directly every single time, or when Liverpool did try
06:05and cut those off by spreading out, that removed the compactness, that opened up the
06:10middle and they played through them. That's about as bad a start as you can get, but Arnold
06:14Salah is nothing if not a problem solver and he's nothing if not a pragmatist. He's very
06:19good at working with what's in front of him and he made a very, very simple change to
06:23this that fixed the whole thing. And that change was he did not lose his nerve. He instructed
06:29the forward four to stay compact, to make sure they were blocking off those central
06:33passing options and then, more or less told Alexander-Arnold, just don't worry about
06:38Liao, to be honest, you can jump all the way forward, sit on Teo Hernandez and we'll just
06:43kind of shuffle across into a back three. And this meant that Liao was now Canardi's
06:48problem, which is fine, they cut off the ball at Teo Hernandez, which is fine and they made
06:52sure they did all that without opening up the middle. Jobs are good and they go on and
06:56win 3-1. And that is why I used a very intelligent sounding word like microcosm at the start
07:02of the video, because not only is my word a day toilet paper now practically paying
07:07for itself, but it is. You're going to see a lot of this from Liverpool in the opening
07:11weeks and months of Arnaslott. Them trying to do one thing and when it doesn't work,
07:17having to improvise with it on the fly. The hope is going to be that eventually these
07:21four just get so well drilled and so well organised at doing this, you haven't got to
07:25start pulling players from other positions to sort of plug the gaps. But until then, expect
07:30to see a lot of pressing jazz from Arnaslott, whatever that is. But anyway, yes, I also
07:35wanted to talk about this man, Kodias Gakpodias. He has definitely had his moments, but I think
07:41it's fair to say he's not been great in a Liverpool shirt so far. Now he undoubtedly
07:46looked like hot s*** at that World Cup, so Liverpool spunked a load of money on him,
07:51but it's never quite worked from the same way in a red shirt as it has in an orange
07:55one. And that, plain and simply, is down to the contrasting play styles of those two sides.
08:00The Netherlands play in a way that can really suit the things he's very good at doing, and
08:04Liverpool just didn't, really. So this is Cody Gakpo's heat map from last night, and
08:10you will see it's not a whole lot. Despite Liverpool having a lot more of the ball, that
08:14is not a player who is desperately looking to get on it and to help make things happen
08:19and to drop into the midfield and create overloads. He's not that interested in link-up play.
08:25And you can see that in his passes as well, because if we overlay those, there's a big
08:29concentration of very short backwards ones right here in exactly the same area that we
08:36said Milan were targeting. And that is because, and you can whisper this, Liverpool were doing
08:40the exact same thing that Milan were. They were being pressed in a 4-2-4 at the same
08:45time and targeting these areas right here to try and get themselves out. But because
08:50Milan were a little bit more conservative with this and didn't want to over-commit,
08:54it made sense for Liverpool to then drop an attacker into this area, knowing the full-back
08:59wouldn't go with them. So as a result, Gakpo's got loads of these, where he's dropped into
09:02the space, he's been found over the top of the press, one touch into Liverpool's midfield,
09:07and they're away. Like almost every single other pass he attempts, it's from this really
09:11dangerous left-hand side of the box, straight into an area where a teammate can potentially
09:16score. It's not overly clever, it's not overly disciplined, it's not trying to retain possession,
09:21it's not trying to slowly unlock the opposition, it is pure out-and-out goal-getting. And that
09:27is who Cody Gakpo is. I asked a Liverpool-supporting friend of mine to try and remember any game
09:33last season where Gakpo started, and he was just crap. And straight away, immediate answer,
09:38oh it was the Forest game from last season. He started in that, and he just could not
09:42do anything right. And this is his heat map from that match. Now apparently he started
09:47as the centre-forward, but then as the game went on, substitutions had him left and had
09:51him right, so you can sort of see there's a small amount of influence here, and he kind
09:55of drops into this bit here, and he's on the right, and he's dropping here, and he's dropping
09:59there. That's not his game at all. Like Liverpool needed him to do a lot of complex link-up
10:05play, to be part of possession, to be part of the passes, to be part of unlocking that
10:09defence, and he was nothing. Now he had some 60-odd touches of the ball in that game, but
10:16he did not create a single chance for his teammate, he did not get a single shot on
10:20target, and he lost the ball 11 times. But in the Milan game, and when he's able to play
10:25this sort of way, despite only being on the field for just over an hour, he created two
10:30or three really good chances, he had two good chances of his own, he blew past a defender
10:35four separate times, taking Liverpool up the field. Like his ball-carrying and his chance
10:41creation are where his strengths are, and it looks like finally he might be getting
10:46used that way. Like what was the best game you've seen Cody Gakpo have recently before
10:50this? I'll let you think, I'll let you think. Yes, that's right! It was Netherlands versus
10:54Romania where he got those two goals, and if we compare the heat map from last night
10:59with the heat map from that game, that is exactly how he was being used there. Like
11:03don't come infield, don't come looking for it, don't help, don't do this, don't do that.
11:08Either get on it deep and go and attack them directly with the ball, or arrive in these
11:12areas without it and be found. And I think, as needlessly poetic as this might sound,
11:17that's what happened last night. On a slot, found Cody Gakpo. He started to find the real
11:23Cody Gakpo. Now don't get me wrong, just like with the pressing structure they're trying
11:27to do, I don't think it's the finished product yet, I don't think it's magically all good
11:30and gravy and biscuits and puppies and kisses and all of that, but if you were the kind
11:34of person who thought maybe he'd be on his way out the door, I think no. I think his
11:39importance will only swell from here. So yeah, that's it. Really good win for Liverpool
11:45in their first Champions League game, coming from behind against a supposed European heavyweight.
11:50A great performance from a player who should now be knocking on the door of the first XI.
11:54A few teething issues, they're all on show, but they are at least, look, watch, being
11:58addressed. Now if you have enjoyed this video, there's loads of Champions League football
12:03this season. They decided to add even more because of money, so please do subscribe to
12:08us here on 442, where we'll be covering as many of them as I am physically able. And
12:14all joking about my probable psychosis to one side, new subscribers really do help us
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12:22to 600,000, which would make my brain explode in my head. So if you haven't subscribed to
12:27us yet and you would like to, I promise you will not regret it. Elsewhere though, you
12:32can grab me on all the socials, at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y, the 442 socials are in the corner
12:36of the video, the comment section I dearly love to read, and we do try and respond and
12:40interact to as many of those as we can. So if you've got an opinion on this game or just
12:45Liverpool in general, please do get it down there, and maybe me and you will have a chat,
12:49like friends do. Until next time though, that is all the outroduction, which I presume is
12:54what outro is short for that I've got time for today, so that's me, that's done, that's
12:59good. I'm really, I'm worried I'm totally bleached out, but nothing I can do about it
13:05now is there. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.