Liverpool’s first week back after the International Break was always going to be the most stern of tests as the two competitions the Reds remain alive in are set to resume with fixtures where the they won’t be favored: mid-week in the Champions League against Paris St. Germain and today in the FA Cup against Manchester City. Liverpool’s hopes to bring home silverware hinged on the outcome of this week, with progression in the FA Cup – even against City – looked like the most realistic path. Unfortunately,
Arne Slot’s Liverpool were thoroughly outclassed on the day, mounting even more pressure on the Champions League tie. Let’s take a closer look at what happened and what it means for Liverpool.
Talking Tactics
One of the emerging talking points in the wake of Mohamed Salah’s announcement that he intends to leave the club at the end of the season is what to make of the Egyptian King’s poor – relative to his impossible standards – form this season. Among the things I’d heard is shifting the winger more centrally, perhaps in a partnership with Hugo Ekitike or Alexander Isak when the Swede makes his return.
Slot’s tactical set up was interesting and, for at least the first 35-40 minutes of this match, looked to work quite well: 4-2-2-2 base, with Ekitike and Salah up top, Florian Wirtz and Dominik Szoboszlai behind, then Ryan Gravenberch and Curtis Jones providing a defensive screen in front of the backline. Manchester City found the set up a bit challenging with the numbers in the middle providing a successful block to build-up in City’s preferred way and forcing them to try and make up the ground on the wings. While no one would ever count Wirtz as a defensive stalwart, the system ensured that there was support on the left with Jones so far back, essentially carrying the defensive work on the wing with Milos Kerkez.
Going forward, it looked a lot more fluid, with Mo more or less central and Hugo Ekitike pulling slightly to the left to make room for Florian Wirtz to fill in the box. Early on, Liverpool looked the most likely to score with Salah and Ekitike spurning chances while Wirtz managed to have decent touches and moments of creativity in City’s box. Which is why most fans will have rightly felt hard done by when Michael Oliver awarded the penalty, correctly, to Manchester City.
Liverpool had done all of the hard work and were set up, it looked like, succeed. Unfortunately, we know how the rest of the match turned out.
Dissecting the Narrative
I sound like a broken record but it must be noted that this has been a rather unprecedented season for the entire Liverpool contingent. Experiencing the loss of one of their own team members, moving through a sped-up rebuild, and then dealing with a rash of injuries throughout the year that no team would be envious of is a lot over the course of multiple seasons, let alone the cyclone that is all of them bundled within this 9 month span.
But I say all of that as a prelude because one of the bits that feels so deeply off about this Liverpool team is the seeming lack of fight or, perhaps more accurately, the speed with which this team wilts at the first hint of adversity. Put plainly: we can’t count on this squad to storm back when down a goal, much less two. And yet the quality on offer – even with the big names missing – feels much too good to waste.
I have dealt with grief and I know enough to say that there’s no way to tell how it manifests in you or the ways in which it lingers and then emerges because it’s all going to be different for everyone. I wouldn’t fault anyone on this team – from Slot on down – for finding this season challenging on the strength of that truth alone.
Which is why it’s so difficult for me to watch them now because it feels pretty plain that this team is, and likely will be for a time, in need of healing in order to make its way back. And, also knowing enough about team systems and leadership, sometimes it requires hearing an outside voice to be able to rouse folks’ consciousness to begin getting them to lock-in.
I want to be clear: I think the team is still playing for Slot – they’re all behind him. But the switch off when things get hard, the feeling like they need to take the foot off the gas – it all feels like a team still trying to piece themselves back together, the coach included.
Elite athletics being brutal as a contradiction to the ways in which fans wax poetic about how we love and feel and dream and emote about sports broadly is a thing I’ve been trying to reconcile in this moment. Mostly because it feels quite apparent that Arne Slot isn’t going to be the one to turn all of this around. What I saw today only furthers that narrative.
What Happens Next
Liverpool will next face PSG in the Champions League with their side of the bracket being the most difficult, needing to dethrone the current titleholders and one of Real Madrid or Bayern Munich before getting to the final. I know this team is capable of overcoming long odds – it’s in the history of the club. But given what we saw today, I feel the odds may be just a little bit long. Which, unfortunately, means the odds for Arne Slot being Liverpool coach next season seem to also get longer.
