Rory Smith, Tony Barrett
Published at 12:01AM, October 25 2014
As is the case for Liverpool so often this season, the default response is little more than a diversion. Just as the storm over Mario Balotelli’s shirt-swapping with Pepe served to distract from Real Madrid’s ruthless exposure of their flaws, so too the blistering, constant criticism of Brendan Rodgers’ defence may not address the real issue.
That Liverpool’s back line is vulnerable is not in question, of course, despite spending £43 million on new defenders this summer. They have a defensive record more fitting with the bottom six than the top, and things have got so bad that Rodgers was forced to dismiss this week the suggestion that he might bring in a specialist defensive coach to improve matters.
“No, no, no. No chance, no,” the Liverpool manager said. “I think it is just the lack of coaching time that is impacting. In terms of that, we don’t need it.”
To judge from an extensive investigation into Liverpool’s performances this season, it seems that the Northern Irishman may well be right, though perhaps not in the way he thinks. Much has been made this week of Rodgers’ ability or otherwise to coax the best from Balotelli. There is, though, a much more exacting test of his managerial ability at hand, and it is not solely to do with the defence.
The bare figures are damning. By pretty much any metric, Rodgers’ side’s defensive showing in their eight Barclays Premier League games ranges from deeply mediocre to outright poor. This will not come as a surprise.
They lead the league in facing what Opta, the data experts, refer to as “Big Chances”: those opportunities from which teams really should score. They have made fewer blocks than any other side and only an underperforming Everton and Chelsea, a team with a vastly different defensive style, intercept the ball less frequently.
Only Everton and Newcastle United have made more individual mistakes leading to attempts on goal.
On average, Liverpool will gift their opponents a chance to score once a game. By contrast, Chelsea have not conceded a single goal that could be attributed to a mistake from any of José Mourinho’s players.
All of this, of course, appears to bolster the initial impression that Liverpool are fundamentally undermined by an ineffectual defence. Further examination, though, suggests that the issue is more complicated than that.
First: though there has been a steady deterioration in Liverpool’s defending in little more than two years of Rodgers’ reign — despite spending more than £63 million on new players —
they are not significantly worse, statistically, than last season.
The difference in this campaign, of course, is that Luis Suárez and Daniel Sturridge are not around to bail them out. Liverpool’s defensive frailty is a longstanding flaw, and one that Rodgers must mend, but it has been highlighted only because of the collapse of their offensive output.
Then there is the nature of the goals they are conceding.
Liverpool’s opponents have created 61 chances against them this season, 48 from central positions. Rodgers’s team are widely believed to be especially vulnerable to set-pieces and, thanks to Simon Mignolet’s leaden feet, the crossed ball, but that is not the case. They are too easily cut apart through the centre.
Martin Skrtel, Dejan Lovren and Mamadou Sakho must take some blame for that, but so too must the midfield and attack. Steven Gerrard, particularly, has seen his defensive contribution recede drastically this season — fewer tackles, interceptions and blocks — which, given his deep-lying role in Rodgers’ system, has left the back line hopelessly exposed.
The problems, though, start farther forward. Liverpool’s style morphed last season from the Barcelona-aping, death by passing used by Rodgers at Swansea to a more intense, counter-punching approach, inspired by Suárez but adopted from Borussia Dortmund.
Without the Uruguayan, Liverpool are neither: they are just a side who have a tendency to be careless with the ball.
It is telling, for example, that only two sides in the Premier League are let down by their control of the ball more frequently — Crystal Palace and Arsenal — and that only three are dispossessed more frequently.
To illustrate: only two players at Manchester City lose possession because of poor touches at an average rate of more than once a game. Both, Sergio Agüero and Edin Dzeko, are strikers, who are liable to do so more frequently. Eleven Liverpool players, almost all of them midfielders, do so.
Then there is the fact that their frenzied pressing, such a potent attacking weapon last year, has all but broken down. According to a metric compiled by StatsBomb, using Opta data, Liverpool were the third most effective side at closing down their opponents last year; they have slipped to tenth this.
More tellingly, as StatsBomb’s Colin Trainor points out, last season, Liverpool pressed intensely when they were winning, losing and drawing, suggesting that Rodgers had set his team up to do just that regardless of the situation.
This season, they press just as much when they are losing, but far less when the result is in their favour. That hints partly at an identity crisis, that Liverpool are not quite sure what they are, and partly that the loss of Suárez has affected their defensive efforts quite starkly.
Rodgers’ team, put simply, give the ball away more and win it back less, which serves to make them more vulnerable to counterattacks.
They are being beaten at the game that they used to such devastating effect last season. Their defence may be weaker than others, but they are also forced to display that weakness more often.
Just as Balotelli’s poor form is a symptom of their failures, not the cause, so their defence’s shortcomings can be traced elsewhere. The problem is not an individual or a unit, it is systemic. Rodgers is right: a defensive coach is not the solution. This one is very much on the manager.
