The Liverpool FC Forum > Opinion

Roundtable: L'verpool vs. Le Arse 27 August 2017

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BabuYagu:

Top: Expected goals & shot maps. Bottom: Expected goals timeline of the game
That was fun. It says a lot about Arsenal when I go into games against them with absolutely no fear whatsoever. I knew we would batter them yesterday. There was the usual hand wringing about the team. Gomez for TAA? I don't like big full backs, but I was not bothered. Moreno!!1! I'm rolling up my sleeves and eating an orange. Karius for Mignolet? I am the king of my own calm kingdom. No creativity in midfield? I'm a beacon of calm in a stormy sea. Whatever XI we put out yesterday, the outcome for me was inevitable. Because the one constant would be a Klopp drilled side vs a Wenger drilled one.


One team played with intensity, the other like a static grumpy old man with his arms crossed.
I have been saying it all summer but I am very calm about our transfer business, even our lack of it. Yes, everything is easier with better players, but transfers is just one method of getting better plays. The shortcut method. A noticeable problem Liverpool have had for a long time now is continuous transition. Every season it seemed we needed to replace half a dozen key players either because we were selling one, age, not good enough, whatever. I proposed that (like Spurs last season) a summer of low squad turnover would also benefit us in the short term. The problems from that might be seen later as player hit the glass ceiling of their potential. But any players signed, especially from abroad, need time to settle. Even though it looks like Salah has hit the ground running, he hasn't. This is 3rd gear Salah. He looks nothing like he player I remember at Roma and Fiorentina. He isn't playing at the same speed as his team yet. Everything looks a little bit rushed at the moment. Perhaps a drop of lavendar in a bath would allow him to soak himself calm? I think it will come in the passage of time. He will get used to the team, our attacking patterns of play, the intensity of the game here which is several notches above that in Italy. None of this is a criticism of Salah. He is playing well and has solid output. I just anticipate it will get better because I have seen better and can see moments where the Salah I know would do something different, would be scoring a hat-trick yesterday. In truth, he could be sitting on 7 or 8 goals already this season with calmer finishing. In Italy he was ice-cold in front of goal. We had a season of Mane refining his game to Klopp's system, now look at him. I'm telling you now, expect the same from Salah. I rate him above Mane as a goalscorer. He was calmly burying them in pre-season, he will again for us.


The biggest robbery in Italy that didn't involve Mini Coopers
So I anticipate improvement from every single player from last season. Especially Klaven, Gini, Grujic, Mane, Matip & Karius. They have gotten a year to adjust to the pace of the Premier League & Klopp's methods. We have a young squad so the rest will all be edging into their peak years. For this reason Klopp is saying he is "cool" with just these guys. If this is all he has, he will make it work. It doesn't mean he wouldn't like to add more people, just that he does not see the negative consequences for not doing so that some of us fear.

But I don't want to turn this into a transfers discussion, there is a time and place for that and it's not here. Instead I would like to talk about training. The very thing we rarely, if ever, see which is perhaps the most important aspect of Professional Football. A consequence of being a translator is that you end up needing to acquire a lot of knowledge about a lot of subjects. We (the wife & I) work on medical seminars, legal documents, curriculum vitae, company accounts, games, published articles, books, instruction manuals. Two of my most recent projects for example were a code of conduct update for an oil rig following a large number of accidents due to substance abuse and a card game mobile phone app.

You end up acquiring a huge amount of knowledge across a wide range of subjects. I realised that to really understand football, you need to do the same thing. There is the technical part of football. Then the tactical (which varies from how one country approaches it to the next). Then there is the physical. Psychological. Business & Finance and even then I am still just scratching the surface perhaps. This is where having a humble motherfucker like Klopp comes in. He strikes me as someone who knows enough about all those areas to have a conversation on them, but also knows enough to understand how limited his knowledge may be. He then recruits and empowers the very best he can in each area and trusts their expert opinions implicitly. You also need innovation. This means always adding young people with new ideas and new approaches who are the cutting edge of the industry. You end up with a good blend of the innovation of youth feeding the decision making processes built on experience.


This guy had the right idea!
The aim of all of this is to always have an edge on your opponents. We don't have the best players. We don't have the most money. If our aim is to buy the best players to compete against in this league, our natural position would be to finish 4th, exactly where we are in terms of finances. So we need to invest what we can wisely while being the best at everything else. Be harder, smarter, fitter and try to stay ahead of the curve. There are indicators that we are on the right path and it's fucking exciting. But that only matters if we follow through. The fear we all have is we have seen nearly before. We are fucking experts on nearly. Some don't yet have that belief that this time will be different. They don't yet have that blind faith. But moments like Saturday will help.

In using our Dr House Klopp template above to success, you can perhaps see where all those before him failed. Hodgson has that experience but zero innovation. With no cutting edge he became a footballing dinosaur. Rodgers had the innovation but not the experiences of failure. Klopp seems to have that perfect blend. The role that Linders has. The additions of the German trio of Mona (nutritionist), Rohrbeck (physio) and Andreas "mini-Klopp" Kornmeyer (fitness coach) seems designed to put us ahead of the curve in fitness and conditioning.

The interesting thing is when you look at Wenger's Arsenal, you can see very clearly where it all starts to go wrong. He joins Arsenal full of new and innovative ideas that put him ahead of the curve, including in terms of fitness & conditioning. Arsenal then dominate the league while the rest play catchup. But the innovation stopped there and now the things that once put him ahead of the curve, now have him lagging behind. A team that once looked fitter, stronger and better prepared than the rest now look the exact opposite - unprepared, unfit, soft, weak, fragile, [editor note - look up more adjectives and insert here].


That was the least enjoyable walk in the park of my career
This brings me back to the thing I wanted to focus on here - training. If you train at a low intensity then you will not be ready for high intensity games. If your body is conditioned to low intensity work then it will fail you in high intensity games. This makes you unprepared for what you are about to walk into. When you are unprepared, it is natural to freeze, panic, shutdown, surrender. Best case scenario is a valiant effort before inevitable failure. And I get that the criticism of the Arsenal players is justified because that effort wasn't there. And it fucking should be. But how long would a person need to put in that effort before acceptance of failure kicks in? And how many times would it need to reoccur before the acceptance kicks in earlier each time. Maybe getting to the point where you walk onto the pitch and just know "today will be one of those days" almost from the start.

I knew Arsenal were beaten before they arrived in Liverpool. I suspect they knew it too. Their only chance of success is if we decided to have one of those crazy days where we just give teams goals. So I don't look too hard at the players. The best indication you have that they are unhappy with this situation is the fact that most want out of the club, refuse to negotiate contracts and even rumours they were pushing the club to make a change in the summer. They knew the situation is fucked up. As with any problem - you have 4 solutions. Change yourself, change the situation, accept it or walk away. They have tried to change themselves - but they don't control training. They tried to change the situation - but they don't decide who coaches them. They have tried to walk away - but the club is keeping them to their contracts. So now they are just accepting it. It's easy to judge them but I am sure you can all identify a stressful situation, those four options, and how natural it is when you have exhausted all the options that you accept the only one left, even if it is not in your nature to do so.

But why are they unprepared specifically I am sure you ask.


The above demonstrates how increase in training impacts on fitness, performance and injuries

The above focuses on just the green injury line in the above graph and the sweet spot between 3 & 4
Many people, including long-term Klopp critic Raymond "The Dutch Guy" Verheijen claim Liverpool's injuries are a result of over-training his squad. Unfortunately it's hard to take him seriously seeing as a lot of what he says is just about self-promotion.

My understanding of things having spoken to the womens olympic volleyball physio and read a fair amount also is that people need to train for the intensity they intend to perform. This means that we need to train harder if our players will be ready to play harder. It also means if we set the intensity level of a game, the opposition cannot cope if they aren't conditioned to reach that intensity level. It also explains the underlying injury problems of Sturridge quite nicely and why there may finally be light at the end of the tunnel, as well as why so many Arsenal players enter into an injury cycle.

When a player is coming back from injury, if they are being nursed through training then their body isn't ready for the intensity of the matches themselves. Therefore the likelihood of reinjury increases. Therefore, I believe this is the reason for Klopp's hard line with Sturridge last season where he removed him from the squad completely until he was deemed fit enough to play. When Sturridge is training 100% at match-level intensity, he plays, when he isn't training 100%, he doesn't even play 1%. This should help build up his injury resistance. He recently picked up a slight knock against Bayern and was removed completely from the squad, not even on the bench for the first games of the season, for example.

In contrast at Arsenal, it's a common criticism of Wenger about rushing players back from injuries. From VVP, to Wilshire, to AoC, to Sanchez with his hamstrings in his first season. He was making them jump straight back into a match intensity environment before they were physically able to do so.


The vicious circle of under-training - injuries - poor performance that many believe certain Arsenal players struggle with
Oh and I cannot finish this post without mentioning Karius. Good to see him get a chance yet had almost nothing to do. In one sense this vindicates the choice of Klopp to use this game to give him a chance in the team as it was an easy clean sheet to boost the confidence. His distribution - one of his biggest assets in Germany - looked ropey as fuck though. He almost got tackled twice in the first half. When it almost happened again very early in the second, Klopp gave him a stern look and a shout and that was it - zero fucking about occurred after that.


What is interesting is how the center backs deal with the backpasses to Karius. Normally when the keeper plays out from the back the center backs split to give options and also move the forwards out of the way allowing passes into midfield from the keeper. But Lovren and Matip are both very central (see above) and Gini is too deep. Which makes sense why Klopp got so annoyed at the fans for going after Karius when he was trying to play out from the back as instructed and also pointing out the other players need to adjust their games if it's going to work.


--- Quote ---@LFCZA
Andy Townsend saying #Klopp turned to the crowd after #Karius' first 'mistake' telling the #LFC fans to get off his back/to calm down.
10:12 AM - 27 Aug 2017
--- End quote ---


--- Quote ---“But obviously you could hear in the stadium that we all need to get used to playing football in close situations. For the goalkeeper or if Emre has the ball and someone is around him, the whole crowd was like ‘woooah,’ he said.

“They are all a little bit surprised, the players should not be because of orientation, you need to play in close spaces, as a goalkeeper and as an outfield player."
- Klopp post match interview
--- End quote ---

I also have an assumption on this. When you are out of the team and get a chance - let's say both Migs & Karius knew before the game that it was just for 1 game - Karius want's to show what he can do. Therefore he takes his biggest asset and tries to show off. Then fucks up. Then tries harder, fucks up some more. Hopefully the lesson is learned now as it seemed to click with him in the second half. In the Premier League you won't get that time to fuck about. By all means, play out from the back but never feel like you have time on the ball. Expect there is someone charging you down as there invariably will be. It's about knowing when not to do something more than just following instruction.

On the plus side though, he closed down Welbeck well for their best chance of the game narrowing the angle forcing a shot over the bar. His vulnerability of crosses didn't rear it's ugly head as he dealt well with the few that he needed to. Nor did he look apprehensive to come off his line which was something he was accused off in the past. I understand the nerves given it's his first game back after a long time out of the side, but he needs to sort that out. Look forward to his next run out, likely against Leicester in the cup I imagine.

Finally, touching again on how our training impacts on our performance levels, I wanted to share a pm I received today about this, coincidentally.

--- Quote from: afc turkish on August 28, 2017, 04:57:16 pm ---Remember that training video you posted, where the game was full-field 11v11, and every so often Željko would stop the game, put a ball down, and the defending team would go haring off on a time-limit counter-attack?

Mo's goal yesterday, straight off the training pitch...

--- End quote ---

The video in question showed the players running counter attack drills where they had a certain amount of time to score. I remember Mane, Firmino & Coutinho all got amongst the goals but Salah stood out in particular. Almost 1/2 the goals scored in the video where by him. I pointed out that we should expect a lot of goals the coming season from him as the patterns were were practising were focused on him being the finishing touch.

As afc turkish points out, a lot of the goals were carbon copy of that goal at the weekend with salah racing away, backed quickly by a few runners and the ball being slotted in at each past the keeper.


Something of an unusual roundtable post for me. There will be lots of talk of players and transfers this coming days so I wanted to focus this one Klopp and the work he and his team does. I'll maybe do my usual stats look at the game over the international break once I watch the game back again.

John C:
Thanks BY, enjoy everyone  :wave

Gnurglan:
Good OP.
Looking back at the game, it was over at 2-0. We could have scored a few more with better finishing. I like how so many of our attacks seemed dangerous. Sometimes it's just one or two or three chances that really are dangerous. Vs Arsenal we had plenty. We were not even at our best and we scored four. A quality team performance. At the other end, Arsenal were lacking something. They do look one paced and players seem to lack focus. It's easy to critisize after the game is over, but there seems to be something wrong with them. There's talent in their side with Sanchez, Lacazette and Özil. Giroud is usually reliable to score double figures every season. And yet they looked like nothing in comparison to our front three.

That said, when we look back at this season, I believe we will see this game as one of our best performances. It was the perfect way to follow up on the Hoffenheim performance. Shame there's a break now. Looking forward to the City game already.

jillcwhomever:
Brilliant opening post, and fascinating as ever. Loved all that analysis on the training techniques, looking forward to maybe a bit more on it.  :)

afc tukrish:
You brought the 'A-team' into the Roundtable...

 :lickin

Klopp and his coaches seem very able to produce the coveted "training effect," the transfer of tactical concepts worked on in training into match play.

If you can find that training link/it's still available, chuck it in here along with Mr. T, Hannibal, Face, and the Crazy One...

As clear and simple an illustration as can be found...

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