Let us keep this short and brief. Slot’s first game ended in a 0–2 victory against an aggressive Ipswich side who more than gave them a run for their money. Let us quickly discuss a few things I took away from the game. No video analysis for the sake of time, sorry.
Ipswich opted for an aggressive player orientated pressing approach and on top of that they backed it up with brave vertical jumps from their backline to make sure every Liverpool player was covered, it was quite often that we saw the magnificent Jacob Greaves jump up to stop Szoboszlai from turning on the ball and connecting with his team-mates higher up (Jota, Salah, Diaz, at times MacAllister). This coupled with a first line of pressure containing four players meant Gravenberch’s efforts to escape their cover shadows to receive the ball were futile. The centre was well and truly closed, and with every Liverpool player being closely monitored by an Ipswich player it meant that Liverpool could not get into a rhythm with every action being completed under extreme pressure.
In buildup Liverpool often tried to quickly circulate the ball horizontally across their backline to find gaps out wide (or in the centre in case Ipswich were slow when shifting their block from side to side), but often failed to find openings, as even though MacAllister and Jota would drift over to the left-hand side to find solutions (also to support Robbo with as many options as possible) they often couldn’t create separation from their markers to receive the ball with more time and space — Ipswich player were particular insistent on staying close to the backs of Liverpool players. Slot noted in his post-match press conference that there’s no point talking about tactics if you don’t win your duels and Liverpool struggled in this department which further hampered their ability to consistently progress the ball into the final third, with Slot’s men only having 7 touches in Ipswich’s box (compared to 41 in the 2nd half)
Upon rewatch it became apparent that Ipswich were tiring before the first half even finished. As the game went on Liverpool found more time and space and showed intention to exploit’s Ipswich’s approach: go long and try to generate more 1v1 situations against their backline. It became obvious as the game went on that Salah, Trent and Van Djik were the biggest proponents of this approach with Van Djik and Trent continuously showing off their passing range to fire balls in behind for Salah, who took advantage of these situations as much as he could (1 goal, 1 assist. Thank you very much).
I am not a fan of the way in which Slot wants to set the team up to press (not our wide pressing traps though, those are good). There’s an emphasis on making sure that the team is vertically compact and protected in the centre, which is good, but it comes at a cost to how effective the pressing unit is at regaining the ball in the higher spaces (Jurgen was the opposite, maybe I need time to get used to things). In the high pressing phase, we fluctuated between a 1–3 and 4–2 pressing structure with almost zero vertical jumps from the 2 sitters (Gravernberch and MacAllister) whenever our first line of pressure was bypassed, this meant that we were often forced into a passive midblock due to a lack of pressure on the ball. The pros of this are that cover is on hand to slow down any attempts to progress through the centre but as I stated before this approach is not proactive enough if you really want to win the ball high up as much as possible. I think its something to keep an eye on, I watched some of Feyenoord’s games last year and this approach presented some problems (we can discuss this further in a future article, do not worry).
I hope some value can be extracted from this very brief debrief, I wrote this in about an hour so excuse any discrepancies you may find, I am trying to be a more consistent writer so these short snappy pieces are a perfect way of doing that. See ya.
