Has Liverpool’s new-found solidity turned Jurgen Klopp’s heavy metal football into pedestrian dad-rock?
When Jurgen Klopp fine-tuned his Liverpool team in preparation for this season, he focused on making them more robust. Following the January 2018 signing of Virgil van Dijk, last summer saw the arrival at Anfield of an elite level goalkeeper in Alisson and an accomplished defensive midfielder in Fabinho. Until then devastating in attack but flaky at the back, no longer would the Reds sabotage themselves.
It worked: Liverpool began the new campaign with seven consecutive wins and exhibited a new-found maturity to their play. In those first seven games they kept four clean sheets; the previous season it had taken 14 matches to reach that tally. When they went in front they almost always stayed there, exerting control on the contest rather than chasing high scores that had previously been their hallmark.
But in choosing to become less cavalier, has the unintended consequence been that Liverpool have lost something? A knack of striking with lightning pace? An instinctiveness in attack? An uninhibitidness? The question is pertinent after they failed to breach a severely injury-weakened Manchester United in a 0-0 draw on Sunday – their fourth stalemate in the last five games.
Once, Klopp’s team – Klopp’s teams, in fact, because the same was true of his Borussia Dortmund side at their best – would simply overwhelm opponents. Twice last season Liverpool scored seven goals. Five times they scored five. They hit four on seven occasions. It may have been chaotic at times – perhaps too much so to add up to Premier League title-winning consistency – but it was often irresistible.
Against United they proved all too easy to resist. Liverpool arrived at Old Trafford as favourites and saw the hosts lose three players – Ander Herrera, Juan Mata and Jesse Lingard – to injury before half-time. Marcus Rashford lasted the 90 minutes but was visibly hampered by a knock from the opening minutes. The visitors duly dominated possession, by 65 per cent to 35, yet mustered only one shot on target.
In their biggest match of the season – perhaps the biggest match of this league season full stop – Liverpool struggled to get out of first gear. Sadio Mane misplaced pass after pass. Mohamed Salah curled a close-range free-kick high over the bar and was substituted for Divock Origi with 10 minutes still to play. A midfield trio of Fabinho, Jordan Henderson and Giorginio Wijnaldum failed to penetrate United.
Of course, Liverpool didn’t concede either. Their new-found solidity paid off at the other end, and another clean sheet was enough to see them go top again, ahead of Manchester City by a point. But who knows how critical the two dropped might prove? The feeling of an opportunity missed was not lost on Klopp. “In days when United is beatable we have to do it and we didn’t do it,” he said.
Klopp famously quipped that his brand of football was equivalent to heavy metal music: loud, intense, maybe a little uncomfortable but certainly exhilarating. What Liverpool served up in the final third against United lacked that vital energy of old and looked predictable, pedestrian; not so much Iron Maiden as Shed Seven. The run-in will tell us whether dialling down the jeopardy has sanitised Klopp’s men too far.