We play a risky game. It's great for goal scoring, and it forces other teams to make a decision on how they want to respond. When we lose the ball on the attack, we press high and condense the pitch (everyone has to move up, including Alisson). Teams can play a direct long ball, but it's hard to hit a 50/60-yard ball beyond Van Dijk and CB partner and drop it in front of Alisson. It's the safest (for not conceding chances to us), but the least effective. The other option for the opposition is to try to play their way out. If they are lax on the ball, we win it back instantly, either through taking possession directly, or having our CBs/CMs stepping up, playing on the front foot, and cutting out passes. But if they're composed on the ball (like City or even like a Brighton), they can get the ball up the pitch quickly. If Fabinho is not in there, our CMs could be wrong side, they could get turned, maybe they lose a 50/50, and next thing you know, it's a ton of space for the other team. Our backline can still step up and play the offside (any hesitation by the other team's players on the ball could cause that move to break down). If the opposing team times the pass well enough though, they can get 1 on 1 opportunities.
Or we could drop off and invite more of our players to come back to help snuff out the attack. But then it leads to us not making challenges until the other team is very close to our box.
There's just no way to have perfect games. We create a lot of chances typically and score a lot of goals, but we can't do that without taking some risks in defending. Even in games when we're in full control, all it takes is one good set of passes, and the opposing team may have a chance to play in one of their attackers. That game against Arsenal last year was probably the peak of it. We dominated that game from start to finish. Most of the time, Arsenal couldn't even dream of playing the ball out. Aubameyang was completely anonymous. Yet, up 2-1, there was a 5-10 minute stretch where twice Arsenal broke through the midfield and slid Lacazette in twice. Once he was just offside (our high line worked). The other, he was onside, and Alisson denied him with a great save (last line for us). It worked out in the end, but on another day, that's an undeserved leveler created out of almost nothing. You look at Brighton yesterday. How many times did they play through and either slipped in an attacker (like March for his 1 on 1) or created opportunities as we backed off. We caught them offside a couple of times when they played it early, but sometimes they were patient and got very deep into our box before we tried last-ditch challenges. There was one sequence where they were showing a replay of a challenge on Salah in the Brighton box, and as soon as they returned to action, Brighton had the ball in our box. That is some quick attack from a decent side. Not everyone can play like that against us, but well-coached teams will no doubt try to play into the space beyond our midfielders and in front of the CBs.
We're always going to leave space, and it's just usually teams can't string the passes together or time their passes well enough (or like Burnley, just hoof it long too early). Some teams will play aimlessly against us just to not concede possession in dangerous areas. But decent sides will think they can get a few chances off us, and if they take them, we're going to concede. Fabinho in there helps a lot, so we do need him back. We just need to hold teams down enough and not concede goals in bunches. We were the masters of winning games 2-1 during our title run and even our memorable games of last season. Not perfect, but doing enough to get over the line. We haven't had a single 2-1 result this year. It feels like we could score in bunches, but also we could concede 2 in 5 minutes in some games.
Entertaining for sure, but will need to do better to see out results.
