Poor defending has become an unwanted theme in a disappointing season for Liverpool.
There are plenty of reasons for this, including an attack which isn’t defending from the front with intensity to an underperforming midfield as well as a defence having more pressure on them than ever before.
Liverpool are not defending as aggressively as they have been in recent seasons and, looking at the data before Liverpool’s stalemate at Chelsea on Tuesday night, the numbers backed up what we have been seeing on the pitch…
As we know, ‘defence’ for Liverpool starts from the front. This season, they have been without Luis Diaz and Diogo Jota — two players well-versed in the art of the press — for large parts of this campaign, players such as Darwin Nunez and Cody Gakpo are learning on the job. Sadio Mane, a supreme presser, also left the club last summer.
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All of this has impacted Liverpool’s success when winning the ball back high up the pitch. In fact, Liverpool are averaging 3.9 high turnovers per game this season. High turnovers are defined as “open-play recoveries which happen 40 metres or less from the opposition goal”.
That figure is down on the last three seasons. In 2019-20, when Liverpool won the Premier League, they were averaging 5.5 high turnovers per game. The following two seasons saw them average 4.8 and 5.3 respectively.
Sustaining high pressure has become an increasingly difficult task. As the visualisation below shows, opposition sides are progressing through the pitch more easily this term.
This puts more pressure on Liverpool’s defence, who are now averaging 6.4 defensive actions per game in the defensive third, which is also more than in previous seasons.
As a result, they are conceding more opportunities, averaging more shots and more shots on target against this season than in any of the last five. To compound this, their average expected goals against per game (1.4) is much higher than in previous seasons: in 2021-22 it was 1; in 2020-21 it was 1.2; and in 2019-20 it was also 1.
There have been question marks over pretty much every Liverpool player this season, barring perhaps Alisson in goal.
Some of the biggest questions have been around Virgil van Dijk, with the centre-back set to return to the side against Arsenal on Sunday after recovering from illness. This season, the defender has looked less imperious and convincing than ever before, both for his club and for his country.
Indeed, in the Netherlands’ recent defeat against France, Marco van Basten – admittedly a regular critic of Van Dijk – suggested the defender “makes noise, but he doesn’t say anything. He is not clear. A good captain thinks aloud, makes it clear what is going on. He stays in between. He creates chaos. That leads to misunderstandings.” Those criticisms were echoed by Ruud Gullit.
So, what might be the reason for Van Dijk’s drop in form, and is it just down to him?
Along with Van Dijk having played a lot of football over the past year, we can also see from the map below where Liverpool have conceded the most chances. There is a heavy concentration of opportunities falling in left-central areas this season, which is where Van Dijk tends to operate.
When adjusted for possession, Van Dijk is making more tackles than in previous seasons for Liverpool (2.7 per game this season versus 1.4 last season). This again highlights how much busier he has been.
He is losing out on more challenges than ever — around 0.31 per game this season — which is defined by Opta as “an attempted tackle where the defender is beaten by a dribble”. By contrast, in 2018-19 he (quite remarkably) did not lose a single challenge.
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Ultimately, Liverpool aren’t performing well as a team and, in turn, this is placing even more responsibility on players such as Van Dijk. And that means he is therefore losing out on more duels than he has in the past.
There have been some uncharacteristic moments from the player this season too, with Wilfried Zaha’s goal for Crystal Palace in August being one example.
“That goal is a product of the way the manager wants the team to play (with a high defensive line),” says Oldham defender Peter Clarke, who has played more than 700 matches in the Football League. “As it’s building up, Eberechi Eze skips away from Fabinho on the right-hand side…
“The two centre-backs are still square-on at that point, facing up the pitch, looking at the ball,” Clarke explains. “When your team is attacking, the most important thing as a defender is to be at your most concentrated. That means getting yourself in good positions, getting yourself ready if the play breaks down and Crystal Palace are on the counter.
“As Eze steps away from Fabinho, the defenders’ body positions could be better. They are almost running towards the wrong goal already.
“They’ve got great amounts of pace at the back, so that allows them to play that high line. But when they come up against individuals who are perhaps just as quick, then it can be touch and go.
“If a player is dribbling at you, I think there is a massive misconception that the defender has to win the ball — they don’t,” he says. “It’s about stopping the attacking player from being able to play a free pass. If you go to tackle and don’t make it, you take yourself out of the game.
“So being prepared to run with a winger or an attacking player is important. You have to do that: to put in the hard yards and feel the burn in your legs. It’s not a nice feeling, but I’d rather have that than an attacking player skip past me because I’ve launched into a tackle too soon.”
Van Dijk was specifically criticised for this goal because of his lack of closing down as Zaha as shaped to shoot; he did not minimise the opposition’s shooting angle.
In Liverpool’s following game, a 2-1 defeat to Manchester United, James Milner led the inquest into Van Dijk’s attempt to stop Jadon Sancho’s opener.
As the ball was pulled back across the box, Van Dijk moved towards his own goal and faced Sancho to block.
Milner’s attempted tackle saw him fly past Sancho, but Van Dijk’s position did not change, allowing the Manchester United attacker the opportunity to pick his spot.
“It’s the only thing I’d ever question Van Dijk on as a player,” said Jamie Carragher on Monday Night Football after that game. “If you’re going through a checklist of a centre-back, he’s 10 out of 10 for most things. The one thing I do sometimes think is: does he lack a little bit of intensity at certain times?”
It was a similar story against Leeds United. Van Dijk was too slow to react again, allowing Crysencio Summerville enough time to shoot and grab the winner at Anfield.
Following Willy Gnonto’s cross, Summerville reacted quickest to pounce on the loose ball…
… and quickly got off his shot. Van Dijk was unable to react.
Although, there is a logic behind not diving in: Van Dijk gave away a penalty on the opening day of the season against Fulham doing exactly that.
In contrast to Klopp’s present Liverpool side, Sean Dyche’s Burnley excelled at not giving their opposition good-quality shooting opportunities, instead allowing opponents to shoot from less-threatening positions. Still, Dyche’s defenders could not be passive and were expected to put their bodies on the line when needed.
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When playing for Stoke City, Danny Higginbotham recalls the general rule was that opposition players would be allowed inside until the 25-yard mark, at which point manager Tony Pulis wanted his players to show attacks onto the outside.
“Liverpool’s problem is because they are so expansive: the defence and midfield are separated and there are spaces for opponents to exploit and have time to get into better shooting positions,” says Higginbotham.
“Where we say the opposition player has more time to get a shot off, that is likely because Van Dijk is erring on the side of caution and that might mean opposition attackers are having slightly more time to set themselves.
“How many times have you seen Van Dijk perform a last-ditch tackle or a sliding challenge? He has always done it but there has to be an adjustment because he is finding himself in a scenario that he hasn’t been in for a large amount of his Liverpool career. Sometimes, you have to be more aggressive.“
When analysing Kevin De Bruyne’s goal for Manchester City last weekend, Clarke does not believe Van Dijk was at fault.
“De Bruyne has got yards on Van Dijk to begin with and that’s because initially, when the ball is on Liverpool’s defensive right side, Ibrahima Konate is all the way over on the touchline.
“The right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold isn’t in the picture (below). That in turn means Van Dijk has to come across and be in a position to cover Konate, which he’s doing. It’s the right thing to do.
“Robertson then is a little bit detached and deep. And as that play is switched out to Riyad Mahrez, De Bruyne is initially offside if that ball goes to him, but it doesn’t. It goes to Mahrez and then he cuts it back. Van Dijk never stood a chance to be able to get near to where De Bruyne was, simply because of the way the play evolved.
“That’s not a Van Dijk error; that’s not Van Dijk being outrun. That’s a set of circumstances that have meant that the two centre-backs are right across the pitch and they’re going to have a sprint back when that ball is played cross-field. They are probably never ever going to get back in time to stop De Bruyne scoring.”
Higginbotham believes that the singling out of Van Dijk in recent weeks has been unfair. He describes Liverpool’s problems as structural because the compact, cohesive unit they once were no longer exists, mainly because of the personnel not being available.
“Liverpool are much more open,” says Higginbotham. “When Liverpool lose the ball, their front three, whether it is Cody Gakpo, Mohamed Salah or Darwin Nunez — and it has primarily been those three — are all in advance of the ball because they want to stretch the game. They aren’t in a position to press.
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“Where Roberto Firmino would provide that immediate press from that false-nine position, now the midfield is needing to affect the press but it is taking them longer to initiate it. That allows the opposition player time to exploit spaces. The full-backs are providing width and all of a sudden your centre-backs are more isolated and there are huge gaps between them and the midfield — and there is either space in front of them (which is the case in the De Bruyne goal) or in behind them. You can only choose to stop one of them.”
Liverpool as a collective this season have looked noticeably static when defending. Set pieces in particular have looked troubling. One prominent example of this was when Eder Militao went unchallenged to score for Real Madrid at Anfield in the Champions League in February.
“This is the type of goal that’s been scored against Liverpool for a number of years,” Clarke says. “This is the manager’s philosophy: to mark zonally. That allows Militao to make a run and be unmarked. It’s a difficult strategy to use. Sometimes it can be really effective. In this instance, they don’t move and it looks quite ineffective.
“When a team is set up zonally, they are usually defending the areas where the most goals are scored — the highest-risk areas. But also you’ve got to be aware of attacking players coming in. You have to make contact; you’ve got to engage the individuals coming in as soon as you possibly can and as far away from the goal as you can.”
Stephen Warnock, who played 67 games for Liverpool, feels his former club are no longer making the right decisions as often as they did in previous seasons — and that includes Van Dijk.
In Bournemouth’s recent 1-0 win over Liverpool, it was (unsurprisingly) a series of errors that led to Philip Billing’s goal.
“Van Dijk goes in tight into midfield on Dominic Solanke; he was insistent on doing it all game,” Warnock says. “Van Dijk and Konate kept on doing it.
“What was then happening was: the two wide men (for Bournemouth) were running off the shoulders of Robertson and Trent straight away because they realised ‘OK, we’re missing a huge presence in the middle because the centre-back keeps on getting dragged in’.
“It became an obvious ball, and I’m thinking: at what point are you going to realise that when there’s no pressure on the ball, you’re going to have to drop deep?
“The initial play came from Van Dijk stepping in too early, Konate then tries to play offside and steps up when he should have just thought, ‘My centre-back has gone and I’m going to have to cover him’.
“It happens for the Julian Alvarez goal for Manchester City last week, too. Van Dijk gets caught in no man’s land, then Robertson tries to play offside, then so does Konate, and you think: if you had just run with your man, you’d have probably stopped it because there’s no pressure on the ball.”
While Van Dijk is not in the form we are used to seeing, he is far from Liverpool’s biggest problem.
Solutions to the defensive issues have proved elusive to Klopp all season, and it may only be a summer rebuild (which is expected) that will instigate a return to best for Van Dijk and his team-mates.
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But, as demonstrated by the team’s four consecutive league clean sheets following Van Dijk’s return from injury earlier this year, he still remains integral. Liverpool are undoubtedly a better team when Van Dijk is in it.
(Additional reporting: Thom Harris)
(Photo: Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)