Baba - I think your analysis is spot on. And yet:
Nearly 3 xG vs just under 1 xG. We definitely didn't play particularly well - in either half - yet arguably we deserved to win, and comfortably so.
Moreno was clearly a culprit for individual mistakes, and so was Henderson. I thought, weirdly, he had a good first half, winning a lot of possession high up the pitch. But he plays the #6 role in a strange way. He's at his best winning it high up the pitch, he can cover the flanks really will and win a lot of possession with his sheer stamina and not inconsiderable ability to tackle and harry, but his ability on the ball melts completely under pressure and, as was really well put in a post in the 'best posts you may have missed' thread, he has no real taste for defending in the way that Mascherano did, or Suarez did. Arguably our best defender in that sense is Firmino - well him and Lovren - players with an almost psychopathic pleasure in taking the ball away from attackers. You could see that Mascherano lived for that, Keita will add another one.
You could see it in the first and the third goals. For the first, it's the player nearest to Hendo who makes a simple run to the near post to score. Why wasn't Hendo in front of him in the first place? He's taller than the other guy. If he's in front of him, that corner doesn't get to him. Regardless, why does he make no effort at all to hinder his run? I'd put it down to that taste for defending - he likes running and harrying, but he's not a 'stopper' in any way, and I don't think Can is, either. It's kind of similar for the 3rd goal - this time he half follows his man, realises he's getting nowhere near it, then completely loses track of the ball when he's in a position to follow it and anticipate where it will land. I genuinely thought we were a little unlucky there - we still haven't seemed to had the real run of a ball in a game for the whole game in terms of rebounds etc - in that the ball falls straight to the feet of a player who didn't exactly intentionally control it, and who hit a relatively scuffed shot (that Karius maybe could have done better with, although he definitely had a confident and decisive game overall - I loved his punch that took out a Sevilla attacker) that went in. We've had so many moments like that this season for us - yet have only seemed to score from them recently with balls finally falling to our feet - yet it seems like every single time there's some kind of rebound in the box it falls to our opponents feet. See also the Moreno miscontrol - that could have just as easily gone under his foot or bounced ahead of him, but it went instead pretty much exactly where the attacker would have wanted it to go.
And, finally, we had a stonewall penalty shout on Mane - far more contact than there was for ours (which I agree might have been a tiny but harsh but not one you could really complain about), and for an offence in shirt-pulling that the ref and co had actually been pretty diligent about penalising for the rest of the game. Mane goes down, should have been a penalty, it's 4-2, and the xG once again tells the true story of the game and we come away talking about how Moreno's was perhaps an understandable meltdown, about how we deservedly won despite playing poorly in some ways, and how we've qualified top of our group and can rest players for the final match.
Fine, fine margins in football - and the difference between us and a team like Spurs hasn't been the underlying numbers, just more like random chance - we haven't quite had the goals our numbers deserve and have conceded more than we deserve. Yes we need better individuals, but, just like with our attack, there's an element of statistical anomaly there too which should, *should* come back into our favour again if we don't lose our heads completely - just like it has been at Anfield.
I guess the thing I'm most worried about is how we can't seem to conceded just *one* goal. 3-1 should have been our cue to either kill them with possession or kill them on the break, but with this being Liverpool we're talking about, it was instead our cue to shit ourselves and inevitably concede another through another series of daft, preventable mistakes to gift the opposition a goal that their pressure hadn't actually really justified (IE our fear of the pressure was larger than the pressure itself - we put Sevilla under at least as severe pressure in that 5-10 mins after Can and Milner came on).
As ever, though, the frustration doesn't come from us being shit - it comes from us being so damn close. I'm still so excited by the potential for this team.
It was classic possession vs counter attack in many ways. Bit like Mourinho's Inter vs Pep's Barca. Difference being Inter have defenders who can defend their box and tactically clever midfielders who can disrupt play when defending deeper - we didn't. On the balance of chances, we were the slightly better team. On the balance of football played, they massacred us. Because at no point did we actually have control over the midfield and, by extension, the opponent.
Agreed. As mentioned in the OP, Lovren is our only "in the box" defender. Players like Carra, who come alive in those areas but look suspect they further away from the box you make them play. The beauty of van Dijk is he is aggresive in dealing with threats in the box, especially in the air, but looks even better when playing further up killing threats early before it has a chance to build into an attack. There was a highlights package of him against Lukaku for Holland that showed well how he handles attackers high up the pitch. I actually think in your list of players who have that taste for defending you mention, Flanagan & Moreno are two others, although Flanagan's time at the club s certainly at an end as soon as his agent can find him a good home. Allan, the Brazilian kid on loan, is another who is very aggressive in teh tackle and is good at ambushing players from their blindside in the way Lucas would do often under Rafa, using superior balance to win the ball rather than strength. I've also heard good things of Adam Lewis for the U18 side in this sense. He sounds like a continental full back who is extremely aggressive in both defence and attack.
That first goal bothers me. Moreno was stupid giving away the free kick. I've seen him blamed for letting the player run across him near post. Also seen Karius take some blame for not doing better, IMO neither of them can do anything about the goal. It's the runners in our box who need to block/track their runners that have to deal with that. Moreno needs to be watching the ball, not the runners and won't do much from a standing start about someone cutting across his face between him and the ball. Likewise, Karius can likely do nothing about a ball glances near post to the far post there. We can't give away a free header there. Whoever lets the runner get the header is responsible. For me it's Moreno's fault for giving away the foul, but there is nothing he can do after that.
I also note PoP mentioned about putting people on the posts but I believe most pressing sides want to clear their box quickly and also sides with keepers who are weak(er) in the air like to leave the posts clear to allow the keeper some space and freedom in there. So undoubtedly a player on the back post stops that goal, but would it cost us others in having less men in zones in the box, therefore more spaces to attack and players roughing up our keeper more often? I guess that is the trade off?
As for that luck/rub of the green - I don't think we should be wanting it there. Klavan surely has to know where he put his header is the most dangerous position in the box to put it. Every single attacking side on a corner will have a man attacking the penalty spot for second balls. If you head the ball there, you will get fucked. It also indicates his one focus is winning the ball, not clearing it. Not surveying the scene and having a idea where he wants to head it to for his own people to mop up. No, it's like he closes his eyes, heads it anyway and thinks he did his job as he won the first ball. Frustrating. van Dijk likely heads that up the right wing for a throwin. Lovren would head it 100 foot in the air straight up and time would run out before it has a chance to come back down. Matip would likely duck - no idea why he tucks his head into his shoulders when challenging for headers in the box sometimes, it's weird. Klavan seems to close his eyes and lets the ball bounce off him wherever.
One of those in europe, you get them at home and don't away. As someone else pointed out, who would take it though?
The us v Spurs thing - I agree the underlying numbers look similar but as I pointed out in the pre-season roundtable Q&A thing we did, in Lloris they have a keeper that outperforms xg year on year by a large margin. In Mignolet we have one who underperforms it by a large margin year on year. Then in Kane, Son & Alli they have three attackers who massively outperform XG and seem (on average) to be doing so again this season. If you win the battle against the numbers in both boxes, you'll concede less and score more than you perhaps deserve. We are losing that battle of the boxes this season, just as Klopp did on his final year in Dortmund for the first half of the season.
Agreed. In terms of the squad we have built, and based on what Ljinders said, we have built a squad designed to defend the midline, not the box. However, this season, the weak tactical level in our midfield makes them easy to play through high up the pitch. We haven't been compact, therefore defensive access has been poor, therefore pressure on the ball has been poor, threfore the high line is badly exposed. So we have to drop off. Which means bigger spaces to cover or the entire team has to retreat to defend the box rather than the midline. Our defence isn't really equiped to defend the box, our midfield isn't equiped to defend the midline. Catch 22?
Yes, we are not far off having a squad that can compete how we need it to. We are a few key players in our spine away from being a menace in all competitions. We still are now really, just massively inconsistent. Every top side will want to give us a swerve in europe as we are capable of dumping any of them out on their arse. The worry for me is that we are changing systems rather than personnel at the moment. I'm hoping that is only a short term thing until we get the players we need because I think our current system has a very low glass ceiling. Coupled with the fact we don't have the resources to match United, City or Chelsea not to mention a host of clubs in Europe - we really need to get the right players for the system Klopp knows how to implement best rather than trying to make a series of concessions to fit players into his system which ultimately limits it's effectiveness. Our build up play since we switched to conservative full backs has looked extremely limited until the game opens up, similar to how United looked earlier in the season. You get a goal from a set piece or counter on a mistake and then the game opens up and you smash in 3 more. The difference being we lack the physical players to win the set pieces battle to get ahead and we are just as likely, if not more, to be the side making the defensive mistakes for the first goal than the opponent. A conservative (or pragmatic as some like to call it) approach won't work for us.