- 1 hour ago
Adam Clery explains the tactics used by Liverpool and Crystal Palace in the Community Shield. Despite fielding their new stars Florian Wirtz and Hugo Ekitike - and twice going ahead - Arne Slot's men were beaten on penalties in the season curtain-raiser. Is this a blip? Or a major warning for the season ahead?
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00:00Right, hello everybody, welcome to the Adam Cleary Football Channel.
00:03I am Adam Cleary and hands up, who had a tenner on that?
00:07Liverpool rock up at Wembley showing off their shiny new players,
00:10their shiny new kits and their manager's shiny old head.
00:14And genuinely struggle a bit against a Palace team
00:17who spent their summer in arbitration against UEFA
00:21and trying to block any calls from North London to abriche Eze's phone.
00:26So the question today is how does this, because for me lads, look how good this is,
00:32muster only five shots on goal, less touches in the box than Palace and half the XG.
00:40If you're bothered about XG, which honest slot will be.
00:47Alright, so before we start, yes, I'm talking a bit weird.
00:50I bit my tongue playing football, which is a brand new injury for me.
00:54So amongst other things, I'm firm effing, quite weird because it's really sore.
00:59So either give me sympathy or just don't mention it.
01:02Anyway though, the football, it is all fun and games,
01:05going and buying Frimpong and Kirkhaz and Vert and Eketike
01:09and getting Salah and Van Dijk to sign new contracts.
01:12But sooner or later, life catches up with you
01:15and you've got to find a way of making all this work on a football pitch.
01:19And as you saw, for a large part of the community shield,
01:22it may be considerably harder than simply just having loads of good players.
01:28And just before we get into all this, right, I want to make something absolutely clear.
01:32Crystal Palace won this game of football because Crystal Palace were brilliant.
01:38Oliver Glasner has, with this group of players, got a team that is so, so solid
01:42when they all drop in to defend.
01:44Liverpool really struggled to get any meaningful penetration through the centre of the pitch.
01:49But also still explosive when they come out of this shape.
01:53Like, you look at the equaliser as Wharton clips the ball in.
01:56And yes, you can point fingers at Van Dijk or Canate or Frimpong
02:00all randomly making a different decision in the moment.
02:04One steps up, one does nothing, one sprints back.
02:07But what you're really looking at here is a defence that aren't entirely sure who best to mark.
02:14Frimpong is standing on Mitchell but worried about Eze.
02:16Van Dijk is drawn towards Saar but doesn't want to leave Mateta 1v1.
02:20And Gakpo, all the way over here, means Kierkegaard cannot leave Munoz and cover a cross.
02:27And that is bad by Liverpool, yes, but it's more than it was good by Crystal Palace.
02:32I don't think they thoroughly deserve to win this game, albeit win it 2-2.
02:37And I just wanted to say all that before we get stuck into the main part of this video,
02:42which is about Liverpool because they are the tactical curiosity of the summer.
02:47But to mention this game and not mention how good Palace were specifically,
02:51I thought would have been wrong and would have made me feel bad.
02:54So there you go.
02:55So yes, Arnest Slott gets all of his new toys on the pitch and they are ahead within the first
03:00few minutes,
03:01which is brilliant.
03:02They played some absolutely unbelievable stuff in that opening half hour.
03:06Looked genuinely, genuinely scary.
03:09But didn't really have any great openings to show for it.
03:12And slowly, as the game went on, lost more and more control.
03:16Like that Eketike, that's a really hard word to say with his tongue,
03:19Eketike goal comes at the end, awful, of a 22-pass move that lasts 66 seconds and involves nine players.
03:27And it sees them repeatedly probe Palace's defence before this rotation between Vert, Gakpo and Eketike
03:34gives them the smallest opening for a shot.
03:37And you, you do, don't you?
03:39You remember Hugo Eketike when he was getting linked.
03:41People were saying, oh, he's a big underperformer in front of goal.
03:44He's not a very good finisher.
03:45Yeah, well, it's the same guy and that's him lashing the ball through a cat flap from 18 yards
03:52without so much as being able to look up and see where the goal is.
03:56How strange.
03:57And it should have been too, a few minutes later, when Eketike pulled out some stunning link-up play.
04:02Like he drops off to receive it really deep, but does so.
04:05So it puts Vert's facing forward and he releases Salah in behind.
04:09And you are, I think, going to see a lot of that exact passage of play from Liverpool last season.
04:15And I don't even personally know how you defend that.
04:19But from then on, control of the game slipped.
04:22Palace started dominating the turnovers, had pretty much all of the major chances and probably should have won it in
04:28normal time.
04:29So the question is, what is going on here?
04:32Now, I am not personally one for average position maps because they can be a little bit misleading unless you
04:39contextualise them properly.
04:40But I think this one from Liverpool yesterday tells you so, so very much.
04:46It shows you precisely how they are going to be playing with the bulk of these players and also the
04:53major pitfalls that come with it.
04:55Like, first off, just look how weighted over on the left-hand side of the pitch all this is.
05:00Like, Vert and Eketike, in particular, they're supposed to be your 9 and your 10.
05:04And yet they both massively favour dropping into this space here, linking up with Gakpo, linking up with Kerkhez.
05:11And that is where the overwhelming majority of all of Liverpool's play in this game came from.
05:16Like, these are all of Liverpool's completed passes in the first half, just minus Van Dijk and Canadi so you
05:24can see it a bit better.
05:25And just look at how many of them are over here.
05:29Like, this space is where so many of these players want to have the ball when they are attacking.
05:34But also, note that when they do get it out to this opposite side, it's not really worked there the
05:40same way it's worked into here.
05:42There's loads of long, direct diagonals.
05:45It's all very nice, very neat, very technical, very patient when it's over here.
05:49And then occasionally, we'll just bomb it out over to the right-hand side.
05:53And remember both of those points, because they're going to come up in a bit.
05:58Now, the first goal shows all of this in action, because as mentioned, it comes at the end of that
06:0220-something pass sequence.
06:04Winds up at the back of the net.
06:05But look at where all of those passes are concentrated.
06:11Left inside space, Verts dropping in, Eketike dropping in, rotations between them two and Gakpo and Kerkhez,
06:18before finally, they make just about enough of an opening for a shot.
06:23This is within the very first minutes of the season.
06:26Liverpool just showing you what the bulk of their attacking identity is going to be.
06:31And I have not used the words Mo Salah once in this video, I think.
06:38But the thing is, that in itself is a part of the plan.
06:43Last season, Mohamed Salah averaged 45 touches of the ball per game in the Premier League,
06:49which is not a remarkable number either way.
06:52Like, it's literally the 50th percentile.
06:54It's right bang in the middle for forwards.
06:56But against Crystal Palace, with so much of the play taking place on the opposite side to him,
07:02he had 23.
07:04That's it.
07:05Like, literally half what he normally has in a game in a match where Liverpool had 60% of the
07:11ball.
07:11And I've seen people on the little internet of yours saying he's had a stinker or a really bad game.
07:16And yes, he did not make any meaningful contributions, really.
07:20But this role he played, where he saw the ball a lot less, is, as I say, probably going to
07:26be the plan.
07:27Because like it or not, the man is 33 now.
07:30He has done unbelievably well to hold back the physical decline.
07:35But this is how you manage that.
07:38This system and the way it concentrates its play over here is designed to maximise Mo Salah's impact
07:46by ensuring that when he does get the ball, even if that's a lot less, there is usually room to
07:51actually do something with it.
07:53And that is why, if you go back to the pass map, so many of these players are making these
07:56raking balls out to the right-hand side.
07:58Because by having so many bodies over here, you naturally draw way more of the opposition over there to try
08:05and deal with it.
08:06So quick passes over to the other side, theoretically, find you in way more space.
08:11And the second goal isn't the Salah thing, but it is this principle.
08:15Long builder pattern down this side.
08:17Wirtz has dropped into this space.
08:18Both Jones and Sabozlai are involved.
08:21And with Palace drawn across, they switch it really quickly out to the opposite side.
08:27Now, Palace do get across and adjust really well.
08:29But just look at the amount of space Frimpong actually has here.
08:34Now, if that had been Salah, he can just breeze past the defender into this space here to either shoot
08:39or create.
08:39But because it is Frimpong and he is right-footed, he is able to attack down the sides into that
08:45gap between the wing-back and one of the centre-backs.
08:48Now, I'm not having for one second that that is a shot.
08:52It's a cross that he gets slightly under and it just sort of curls into the net.
08:55But the point is, he's still able to get into that space because so much of the play has been
09:01drawn over to that side.
09:02It's Liverpool's other side of their attacking identity also immediately bearing fruit.
09:08And I've used the goal as an example, but if you are in any way sceptical that this is designed
09:12for Salah, it's literally where his first touch in the game comes from.
09:16It's the second minute or something and the left-hand side here obviously has Kerkhez and Gakpo because they are
09:21playing on the left-hand side.
09:22But both of your central attackers are over here as well as both of your central midfielders.
09:29They knock it back to Van Dijk and whoosh straight over to the right-hand side.
09:33He finds Salah on the touchline and look at all the space he has.
09:38Even with a defender in his space, they've given him a lot more room to play with than anybody on
09:43this side of the pitch did.
09:44So yeah, this is really good in my opinion from an attacking perspective.
09:49So why did they not win or even play that well?
09:54Well, first off, it must be pointed out that if you are Liverpool, it is much harder to control a
09:58game off the ball if you don't have Ryan Gravenberch.
10:01And it is a lot harder to control the game on the ball if you don't have Alexis McAllister.
10:06So that feels like a fairly quick fix they might make for the start of the season.
10:10And also it would be remiss of me to point out that you can't just throw four brand new players
10:14into a system and expect it to magically work.
10:17Sloth's going to have to do a lot of sort of coaching and training to get them as well gelled
10:21as they were last season.
10:23But neither of those two issues, the change in personnel or the sort of lack of familiarity, were the main
10:30problem.
10:31That was in fact this, the Florian Wirtz-Hugo-Eketike counterpress, because it was virtually non-existent.
10:42Last season for Liverpool, these two positions tended to be Diaz and Sabaslai, who are monsters off the ball.
10:49Closing down, winning it back, or at the very least, shutting off options sufficiently.
10:53So when teams get the ball back off Liverpool, they can't then break quickly up the other end.
10:58And while Wirtz and Eketike are obviously massive upgrades on them in terms of what they'll do with the ball
11:04and their threat in the final third,
11:05they don't, or at least don't yet, have that sort of intensity when the ball is lost.
11:11And this is possibly a harsh criticism, it's literally his first game and it's not really what they signed him
11:16to do.
11:16But when Liverpool lose that ball for the equaliser, I think Florian Wirtz has more than enough time to get
11:24back and stop Adam Wharton playing that pass forward.
11:27But he just hesitates. A little skip here, the sort of the lack of commitment to it is how he's
11:33able to play it.
11:34Now maybe that's just something Slott's going to work on with him and he'll improve, or maybe it's not his
11:38responsibility at all.
11:40And he should actually be looking at one of these two to step out and stop that happening.
11:43But regardless, this was the entire defensive contribution over 90 minutes from two players who are replacing players who used
11:52to make a much bigger one.
11:53Like literally three ball recoveries in a central area in Palace's half.
11:59And a ball recovery is not a tackle or a block or an interception, by the way.
12:02It's just a loose ball like this that they have gotten back.
12:06That, I don't think, will be enough to not cause problems.
12:11So yeah, that's a bit of a weird video on why I actually really like what Liverpool are doing and
12:16how they're blending their new players and how it makes them a very exciting attacking prospect.
12:20But how also at the same time, Crystal Palace took one look at it and just went, yeah, no problem,
12:26we'll play through that.
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13:06What simple set of instructions those are for you.
13:09Only on a slot job was as simple as those five things.
13:14That's a good outro.
13:15Goodbye.
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