What Has Happened to Liverpool? How the Reds’ Title Defense Fell Apart
You’ve seen it once, you’ve seen it before was the most resonant feeling associated with Liverpool’s first-leg defeat to Galatasaray. It was a 1-0 defeat in Istanbul, and you could have been forgiven for thinking you were watching a literal replay of the game between the two sides just months earlier. Close your eyes, and now open them: everything is the same, untouched; same kits, same stadium and the same outcome. Nothing different.
Liverpool lost, and not for the first time this season either, and nor will it be the last. The narratives are a familiar one, echoed many times this season: the team was outrun, Mohamed Salah looked lost, the team had no compactness. Everything was so predictable and devoid of ideas, a spark of imagination, a flash of intensity. There was no fight or aggression, just the portrait of a dishevelled team walking – and that is the only word for them now – towards an abyss purely of their own making.
It wasn’t meant to be this way. A year ago, Liverpool were racing to the league title. Their team was inevitable. If they pressed less, there remained a crisp, assuredness to their play in possession. Mo Salah was having illuminated games every week. And Arne Slot seemed incapable of faulting. A man who seamlessly replaced the seemingly irreplaceable Jurgen Klopp.
That was then. Perhaps the shadow many thought Klopp’s legacy would cast over the club is now finally being felt. Everything about Slot’s team, what it is and what it isn’t, just brings with it a yearning for what Liverpool used to be, and what Klopp was.
The football right now is a stale style of play that reeks of passivity both on and off the ball. The build-up play is slow and timid, deprived of direct runs in behind the defence, bravery to take the ball and move it at speed, to stretch the pitch and open space. Possession is maintained, recycled, and not much else.
The state of the team without the ball is even worse. They are overrun, easily, opponents running through oceans of green between the midfield and defence, bringing the thunder that was once the natural element of how Liverpool hunted teams off the ball.
A key characteristic chronicling Liverpool’s forewarned demise is the lack of pressing. During the barren run in November, the running statistics pointed to opposition teams covering more ground than Liverpool in successive matches. The most damning one was arguably Manchester City, 118.7km to Liverpool’s 109.67km. If City in previous years faltered against Liverpool’s hounding intensity, here they strolled through the absence of any kind of pressure.
Notably, of the top ten players who have covered the most ground in the Premier League, none of them are playing for Liverpool. This has inevitably placed Liverpool’s defence under increasing pressure as they are no longer afforded protection by a midfield which has suddenly developed amnesia to the art of chasing, pressing and recovering possession. The likes of Alexis Mac Allister and Curtis Jones seem shadows of the players they were last season.
On the ball and the situation is as bleak. There is no cohesion or structure to the play. The football is devoid of speed, energy and craft. It’s all just very boring. The questions then are, what has caused this and what can be done about everything?
Liverpool’s attack has failed to spark. The chemistry and fluidity in play that defined them for so long has vanished. The attack often appears estranged from each other, unsure of how to build up play. There is little incision or intensity to the passing, no direct runs in behind the opposition defence. Much of this has led to discussions gravitating to the form of Mo Salah.
His fall from the heights of last season has been violent and much has already been made about his form, whether he should be sold, whether he is the worst player on the team. What is abundantly clear is that Liverpool are no longer playing through him, or to him. Jamie Carragher on Sky Sports claimed that Liverpool was now the Florian Wirtz team, and not Salah’s team.
This, on surface, is true as the transition from Salah was always going to happen at some point, and alongside Hugo Ekitike, Wirtz has appeared the rare glimmering light in attack lately. But the way Salah has been tactically marginalised is a curious choice on the part of Slot and has not paid off in how he has envisioned.
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Salah appears far less centrally involved, hugging the touchline rather than being closer to goal. It has removed Liverpool’s greatest goalscoring threat since Sir Kenny Dalglish away from the positions on the pitch where he can actually threaten a goal.
There are other factors behind Salah’s decline and a very telling one is the inconsistency of a partner at right-back. He is no longer blessed with the otherworldly creativity of a Trent Alexander-Arnold unlocking space for him from behind. Nor does he have a Darwin Núñez-type figure willing to sacrifice to make space for Salah.
A portrait of this relationship was Liverpool’s equalizing goal last season against Arsenal at the Emirates. It was a counterattack of sweeping simplicity: Alexander-Arnold drilled a pass down the channels, Núñez latched onto it as Salah cut inside to the space vacated by the Uruguayan. It was as simple as that and it didn’t have to be anything complicated because even if opponents could sense it, Liverpool were too quick, too good, to be stopped.
Now they are muddled by inconsistency and assailed by doubts. Slot seems to have lost confidence in an intense attacking play and approaches teams in a far more laboured manner. This simply will not coax the best out of Salah, a menace on transitions.
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Without an intensity in their play, Liverpool will continue to waste their best attacking players. And this, more than anything, is what’s slowly draining Liverpool fans and depleting confidence in a manager – who despite delivering the title last season – they will likely never be as enamoured with as they were with Klopp.
But there is one factor that is almost never discussed yet holds arguably the biggest weight of significance. Liverpool went through a summer of turbulence and tragedy. It is often too easily forgotten that Diogo Jota died mere weeks after his wedding, after they celebrated winning the league.
He was their teammate, friend and brother. And now they are expected to magically recover and play as though they are not constantly reminded of his aching absence. Who will understand the conflicts they internally grapple with when his song is chanted at the twentieth minute of every match?
Is it a happy feeling that their friend is honoured constantly, or will there be a relief when the song stops being sung and some may feel they are now allowed to move on? It’s a little strange when people discuss Mo Salah’s conduct as if we didn’t witness him sobbing on the opening night of the Premier League when Jota’s song was bellowed by the Liverpool fans.
This is an emotional club held together by powerful social bonds only a city like Liverpool could really build. They win together. But they also suffer together. Grief has sat in the place of where Jota should be sitting, and far too few pundits acknowledge this when deriding Liverpool as terrible champions.
It may be that by next season Liverpool will have greater chemistry as players begin understanding each other’s movements and decision-making process. For now, they remain stale, with the odd ghostly reminders of the great team they were mere months ago.
By: Rabbil Sikdar / @aziznahar_
Featured Image: @GabFoligno / Visionhaus – Getty Images