The first part of John Aldridge’s ECHO column calls for Arne Slot and his Liverpool squad to get back to basics as a huge few weeks await on the other side of the international break
Arne Slot during Liverpool’s Champions League win over Real Madrid(Image: (Justin Setterfield – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images))
Liverpool have too many bad habits and if they are to get back up the table on the other side of yet another international break, then they have to go back to square one. Right now, Arne Slot’s side are needing to score too many goals to win games and going gung-ho has caught them out too many times already this season.
If you look back to last season, when Slot’s side were piecing together their ultimately successful title run, it was based on clean sheets. Scorelines of 1-0 and 2-0 became the norm and they were so defensively sound with Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konate behind that midfield trio of Ryan Gravenberch, Dominik Szoboszlai and Alexis Mac Allister.
Liverpool went back to basics in that sense for the recent wins over Aston Villa and Real Madrid and it gave them a real foothold in the season at the time. Then Manchester City were visited and that all went out the window for whatever reason.
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But to get back to winning ways, Slot and his players have to adopt the same approach they did for those games at Anfield before the break against Real Madrid and Aston Villa. It is the sort of stuff Arsenal have done so well; be defensively solid and everything else stems from that.
That has to be the blueprint now: that same midfield three offering enough protection to the centre-halves and full-backs who pick and choose their moments to attack. Liverpool need to find their way back and get something going because we’re about a third into the season and too many games have been lost already.
You can guarantee Nottingham Forest are going to come to town under Sean Dyche with no airs or graces. The former Everton boss will look at what Brentford did to Liverpool a few weeks ago and assess that Slot’s champions don’t like the physical stuff.
Dyche’s team will ask real questions over Liverpool’s ability to beat the more direct teams of the division, so how they answer that will be interesting. So far, you have to say they have been founding wanting. That has to stop now.
Liverpool can be sure to be in for a battle on Saturday and how they handle that side of the game will go a long way towards them being able to outplay their visitors on the day.
Beat them 1-0 and that is all they need to do. Then it is on to the next and trying to build up some momentum and confidence to get back to the sort of standard we saw so often last season.
And hey, it’s fair to say we owe Forest one too after they won at Anfield last season.
Too many robots on the modern pitch
It was clear to me that Mohamed Salah was bullied by Manchester City before the international break.
The Liverpool winger was doubled up on all game and I have no doubt about it that those instructions will have come from Pep Lijnders, the former assistant of Jurgen Klopp, who now works alongside Pep Guardiola at City.
Lijnders will have known better than anyone else on the City staff how best to counteract Salah and the instruction, clearly for me, was to try and wrestle him. It worked like a charm, sadly.
What we don’t see enough of in the modern game is wingers who decide to switch during matches if things aren’t quite working out. Everyone is too robotic and under too many instructions to stick precisely to the game-plan.
In my day, if a winger was having a tough time – or being bullied – he would swap with his team-mate on the other side and it just gives the defenders something new and fresh to worry about when the change-over happens.
I am sure Salah can also operate centrally but could someone like Hugo Ekitike have moved over to the right at the Etihad? Cody Gakpo could be given a go there at times maybe? It’s all about fitting in the pieces to the puzzle in an attacking sense.
Slot has the players to tear teams to shreds on any given day but it is about making sure he gets the combinations right not only game to game, but also in-game as well.
I see no problem with players swapping positions in that front three if things are going to the plan. Too many robots just stick to the instructions.