00:00Right, hello everybody, welcome to the Adam Cleary Football Channel and something is wrong with
00:05Liverpool. Now don't get me wrong, I would not mind there being something wrong with my football
00:10team while they're currently sat at the top of the Premier League and in the process of integrating
00:14three of the most exciting attacking players in all of Europe, but the narrative is the narrative.
00:19Coming up they've got Chelsea away which suddenly feels like a really big game with pretty major
00:24consequences and that will probably be our big Monday video whatever happens, but I just wanted
00:29to do something really quick, it'll not be really quick, showing you what is going wrong so you can
00:35watch out for it and that has been happening all season, it happened loads against Crystal Palace
00:39and it happened in the very first minute against Galatasaray, so yeah.
00:49Right, so we've got two very important things to start with and the first one is if you can hear
00:53an
00:53air conditioner going during this video, I'm not sorry about that, I was under the apparently
00:58mistaken impression it's October in the UK so I wore a jumper and I've come in and it's about a
01:04million degrees so if you can't hear that please live with it. But secondly and actually relevant
01:09to the video is that when Arna Slott got the Liverpool job he decided he wanted to bring back
01:15a little bit of Liverpool's pressing identity. Not quite to the same level they were doing it under
01:20Jurgen Klopp when it was like a whole thing but just enough to make them a far scarier proposition
01:25when the opposition had the ball in their own third. And what characterised this wasn't necessarily
01:30sprinting all over and being in your face but the coordinated way they would do it. They went to
01:36Old Trafford very early on and scored three goals as a direct result of pinching the ball off a Man
01:42United player and attacking really quickly. First they intercept this pass out from the back by
01:47Casemiro and wind up with Diaz totally free at the back post. For the second they swarm Casemiro as he's
01:53playing out Diaz takes it off him and they again work it out wide for a cross. And then finally
01:58they mug Kobe Maynou immediately get this 4v2 and kill the game entirely. Now don't get me wrong they
02:04were really defensively solid last season but the important thing is they were defensively solid
02:10from the front as well as at the back. The best example I could find right is this goal they
02:16score
02:16against Aston Villa who keep in mind here are a team who actively want you to press them high so
02:22that
02:22they can either play it through you or over you or something like that. That's their entire game plan
02:27and they're about as comfortable as you possibly can be at the start here right. Martinez is making
02:32it a back three with the ball and then the full backs have pushed into the same line as the
02:37centre
02:37midfielders to give you four beyond the first line of Liverpool pressure. And that is exactly how Aston
02:44Villa want to start this sequence of play. But Liverpool's press from here is so well coordinated
02:50it all comes undone. And as Garcia here is a 21 year old Spanish right back making only his second
02:57league start for the club. So if there is one weakness in this pattern of play it's obviously
03:02going to be him. So if you look at how Liverpool are set up there is one area they're not
03:08covering
03:08and that is to allow a pass to go out to him. Jota gets in a position to stop him
03:14playing backwards,
03:14Jones curves his run around to stop him playing forwards and Soberslay jumps from Tielemans to
03:21McGinn to rule out the ball just coming back from where it came. And that is a manufactured nightmare
03:27for a young player still finding familiarity with his teammates. So understandably he panics, tries to
03:34go back to Martinez but because he's being rushed his body shape is all wrong. He can't get anywhere near
03:39enough power, direction or anything else to make that ball travel as far as it needs to and Jota
03:46intercepts it quite easily. And from there somewhat unsurprisingly Liverpool are in. He squares it to
03:51Salah and they get a goal. And the reason I wanted to show you that clip specifically right is just
03:55think back right that is a high turnover. It's aggressive pressing but nobody made a single tackle.
04:02It was all down to how structured it was, how they all did the right things at the right time
04:07and how
04:07they forced a mistake as a result. Nobody actually won the ball. And the two things I want you to
04:13take
04:13away from that example right is that last season Liverpool at their best were so coordinated and
04:19proactive at both putting pressure on the ball and also stopping the opposition playing forwards.
04:27And that's going to be a theme here. Go back to those Man United goals right. Manu receives the ball
04:32and McAllister immediately gets on to him to stop him turning and playing forwards. And then under the
04:39pressure of trying to figure out what the hell else he's supposed to do, they nick the ball back.
04:43Casemiro looks up here, sees every single possible option marked by a white shirt, cannot play forwards,
04:50so panics and they take it off him. And I know what you're thinking, that first one you showed Adam,
04:54that was just a stray forward pass that got cut out. That surely can't fit this pattern as well,
04:59can it? Well, if we just wind it back a couple of seconds, gosh, would you look at that when
05:03Man
05:04United find Bruno Fernandes between the lines, Canade here jumps to, and you might as well just
05:10say it with me at this point, stop him playing forwards. This was Liverpool's main off the ball
05:18identity last season. Not charging around, not winning tackles, not being chaotic, but being so
05:24well structured and aggressive when you needed to be, that when the opposition beat your first line
05:30of pressure, you would force them whenever possible to go backwards with it. But thing is,
05:35right, that was obviously the past and we're here to talk about the present, aren't we? So shall we
05:40have a little look at the very first minute of the Galatasaray game? Ball with the goalkeeper,
05:46no problem there, but only Eketike putting any pressure on it. And even then,
05:51at a jog. When it goes out here to the fullback, he has so much time to get his head
05:56up, consider his
05:57options, maybe even carry it forward if he wants to. And this isn't what he ends up doing, but if
06:01you just stop it there and have a look, right? If he decided to play the ball in here, there's
06:05no
06:06pressure on that whatsoever. He could get turned, he could get his head up, he could consider his
06:10options as well. But that isn't what he does, he instead goes long, which feels like a bad idea,
06:15but somehow he manages to hit a player in between Liverpool's midfield and defensive lines. He's also
06:22got all the space he wants. Now, last season, two things would have happened to you. Either
06:27Ryan Gravenberch here would be sitting on him, so that pass wouldn't even be an option, or
06:32if he was found, he'd have had Canardé jumping right in behind him, forcing him into the pressure
06:38of these two players here. You remember, just like that Bruno Fernandes moment against Man
06:44United, that is how they did these things, and they're just not doing it. Instead, several
06:50other things happen here that are all quintessentially just not Liverpool. The defence all drop off,
06:56leaving this massive gap here, if, say, Osherman wanted to drop into it. Wurtz does get in front
07:01to apply some pressure, but then weirdly backs off in the wrong direction, letting him have
07:05time on the ball. And even Curtis Jones, who is really, really good at doing this stuff,
07:11gets in behind him and then applies zero pressure to the ball. And the result is that Eunice Akgun
07:17here, I think this is, can not only receive that pass, can not only bring it under control,
07:22can not only get turned and get his head up, but he's also able to just carry it a good
07:27five or six
07:28yards without a single attempt to challenge him or even pressure the decision he's making. It's just
07:34so astonishingly passive for a team like Liverpool, and a slightly better second touch here,
07:39and it's probably a goal. In fact, what's even madder about this clip is if you go back and you
07:44just watch Van Dijk, he realises early that there's going to be no pressure on the ball,
07:49so drops off even sooner, allowing him to stay with Osherman and stop them getting one of those,
07:54like, 2v1 square pass FIFA tapping goals that everybody apparently hates.
07:59Now, look, right, do I think that Liverpool fans should be worried about any of this?
08:07Not really. No, it's still very early on in the season. It's only two losses. They've got a lot
08:12of players. They're still trying to bet in. This kind of stuff can just happen. But there is
08:17one element of it that would concern me a bit, and that is that it isn't that Liverpool aren't
08:24doing all this stuff from last season. It's that they still are doing it. It just doesn't seem to be
08:29working. Now, I watched the entire Liverpool versus Crystal Palace game more than once.
08:34But that's his job.
08:35That's right for the Crystal Palace video we've just done, and early on, there is a sequence where
08:39Wirtz, where McAllister, where Kerkhez all jump at exactly the right time and with the right amount
08:45of intensity to force them back. That's exactly what Liverpool were doing last season, and crucially,
08:50two of the new players are doing it there very well. But for every good example of this you can
08:55find
08:55in that match. There are another, like, ten where they either don't do it right or don't
09:01do it at all. The best chance of the match, they are perfectly set up here. Isak and Salah
09:05are there to pressure the ball. The midfielders are there to stop passes into this space, and
09:09just nothing. They do nothing. Richards moves the ball inside, and Isak just stops his run
09:17entirely. Mo Salah backs off, and Lacroix carries it forward under no pressure whatsoever before
09:23hitting a really nice pass in behind the defence that Munoz should eventually score from. But the
09:29thing is, if he hadn't hit that long ball, right, just stop it at this one moment, look what his
09:34other option was. He could just as easily slip this into Adam Wharton, who would have all the time he
09:40wanted to turn, all the time he wanted to assess, all the time he wanted to play the ball forward.
09:47Is this point making sense now? And if you look at how high Liverpool are here, he could slip in
09:52literally any one of their attacking players. Even when the ball does get cut back from the
09:57byline, look at the space they have to hit with that. Any supporting run from midfield,
10:02it's got a really good chance of scoring. So, just to bundle this up into a really nice,
10:07neat little line you can pass off as your own if you're watching the game in the pub this weekend,
10:12you are welcome. Liverpool have suddenly, this season, become a team that no longer puts reliable
10:18or consistent pressure on the ball, which is not a crime, obviously. A lot of teams don't look to
10:24pressure the ball when it's in the opposition third. But the difference, and indeed the problem,
10:28is that virtually all of those teams don't then have a really high line. If you want to push your
10:35defenders up like this, it requires your forwards to stop passes into the midfield, and then your
10:41midfield to jump up and stop players turning when they do get through. And if you're not going to put
10:47that reliable or consistent pressure on teams in their own defensive third, you are giving them
10:52the time that will let them access the spaces in midfield, and in Liverpool's case, the space they
10:58leave in behind. And you combine that with just how good they are going forward, how much talent is
11:04still in this team, and you're ending up with these really dramatic, high-scoring, chaotic games.
11:10And we will get into what the root causes of all of this happening are in some other video,
11:15I presume. But if you want a really quick, oversimplified answer, it seems pretty straightforward
11:20to me that if one year you go from having Diaz and Jota and Sobazlai as your top-end system
11:26players,
11:27so well-drilled in what you're doing, and then the very next, you've got Eketike, and you've got
11:32Vert and you've got Isak, who are not system players at all, but instead elite-level individuals
11:38that the system is going to suffer as a result. And that's not inherently a bad thing if you are
11:44capable of scoring your way through periods of tactical dysfunction, which Liverpool literally
11:50were doing. But the problem they have is that the results have now caught up with the performances
11:55before the performances caught up with the results. It was always going to go one way or the other,
12:01and it's gone the bad way. So yes, I know I said that was going to be quick at the
12:04start.
12:05I suspect it probably hasn't been. So thank you for staying with all that. That is a bit of a
12:08simplified version of what is going wrong with Liverpool that you can watch out for the next
12:14time they're on the telly, because it's always happening. Until next we meet, you can get me
12:17across all the social medias at Adam Thierry, C-L-E-R-Y. And I forgot to drill you about
12:21it
12:21at the start of the video, but we have recently launched a channel membership, which I'm genuinely so,
12:27so, so, so stoked about. Not taking anything away, giving you more and with interactive stuff and
12:33free stuff and exclusive stuff and discounted stuff on merchandise. I can't believe I had one
12:38to hand. Like the ACFC kit, which is nice, isn't it? Get some money off that as well as loads
12:45of
12:45other fun stuff. I'm rambling now. Let me know what you think, Liverpool fans, in the comments down
12:50below. What do you think the problem is? I would like to gauge some opinion on this and subscribe to
12:55us here, if you haven't already, but I think I did already say that. That's Liverpool. I'm me.
13:00You knew both of those already. Goodbye.
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