Jonathan Wilson The case for the defence
For the first half an hour of their visit to Chelsea, the game that would ultimately seal Liverpool’s first Premier League title, Manchester City looked comfortable. They passed the ball about slickly, as they had in their post-shutdown wins over Arsenal and Burnley. Watching their mastery of the ball, the cleverness of the interchanges, it was hard to understand how they could be so far behind Liverpool. Then a free-kick was cleared, Benjamin Mendy got in team-mate Ilkay Gundogan’s way to present Chelsea’s Christian Pulisic with the ball and, having recovered, compounded the error with a rash lunge that the American skipped by easily before clipping a finish past Ederson. That ten-second passage of play exposed most of the problems with City this season.
The expectation at the end of last season was that Jurgen Klopp’s side, having achieved the third-highest points total in history and still failed to win the league, would fall away, exhausted by their effort and by the sustained excellence of an apparently implacable City. But Liverpool maintained their level, perhaps even improved, and it was City who faltered.
Vincent Kompany left and the form of Nicolas Otamendi and John Stones has remained questionable, issues compounded by a knee injury that kept Aymeric Laporte out for almost five months. That meant Fernandinho having to operate as a central defender, which in turn left Rodri exposed at the back of midfield more often and earlier than was surely intended. Left-back, meanwhile, has been an issue for City throughout Pep Guardiola’s tenure: Mendy, blighted by injury, has never entirely convinced; Oleksandr Zinchenko is inexperienced; Joao Cancelo prefers the right; and Angelino was loaned to RB Leipzig. City’s problems this season have been almost entirely defensive.
It’s a long-standing issue of Guardiola sides that if you can get the ball off them they can be vulnerable defensively. It may even be a flaw inherent in that style, given the need to prioritise ball-playing rather than defensive qualities even in those playing at the back. This has led to the statistical quirk that Guardiola teams will often not concede many goals, only then to concede a flurry in a big game against a high-class opponent; breaking the press is hugely difficult but, once it is broken, a soft underbelly is readily exposed.
But this season has been a little different. Again and again, City have been caught out by simple counter-attacks or balls played in behind them: Norwich did it, Wolves did, Liverpool did it, Manchester United did it and then Chelsea did it.
At the point the title was won, after 31 games, City had scored seven more goals than Liverpool. Vitally, though, Liverpool had conceded12 fewer. Fourteen of their 28 wins had been by a single goal. Only five of City’s 20 had been. That fits with a comment Klopp made after his side’s goalless draw with Bayern Munich in the first leg of
Jurgen Klopp has realised that an increased focus on defending gives him a competitive advantage
their Champions League quarter-final last season about the growing importance of defending.
The latter stages of the Champions League in recent seasons have been characterised not only by the quality of the attacking play but by the thrilling nature of the football. To a large extent, that has been because the art of defending has been lost, in part because the super-clubs dominate their domestic leagues to such an extent that they barely have to consider how to shut down their opponents. Defenders are selected for their capacity to pass or cross or shoot, rather than the skills that once would have been traditional for their position: marking, tackling and heading.
Klopp has realised that an increased focus on defending gives him a competitive advantage. Liverpool’s two biggest signings have been a goalkeeper and a central defender. Alisson is good with the ball at his feet but is also a supreme shot-stopper, less prone to recklessness than Ederson. Virgil van Dijk, meanwhile, is an excellent traditional defender who happens to be good on the ball and is also a leader; he is to Liverpool what Kompany was to City – and probably has better positional sense. Between December 7 and January19, Liverpool conceded one goal in11 matches (excluding the League Cup defeat to Aston Villa when the first team was at the Club World Cup).
This isn’t, of course, defending in the sense of dropping deep and withstanding a siege. It’s front-foot defending, which in turn is the result of careful analysis. That’s why Klopp described the 4-0 win over Crystal Palace, when Liverpool’s rhythm returned after lockdown, as a great counter-pressing performance. Although they followed that up by being torn apart at The Etihad, this was a total anomaly that can probably be put down to complacency and a week of celebrations.
The interchanges of the front three and the overlapping full-backs may attract the headlines, but the real difference between Liverpool and City this season has been at the back.