How Liverpool shrugged off 'mediocrity' and honed the art of closing ...
When this season is over, the turning point for Liverpool may well be traced back to the final stages of a match early on away against Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Despite beating the Premier League’s bottom side 2-1 on September 28, there was a nervousness about the team in a far-from-convincing closing period. New head coach Arne Slot highlighted it immediately after the match, saying that, while he was happy with the result, he was far from satisfied with how it arrived.
Days later and after a thorough review of the action at Molineux, Slot’s feelings had only grown more acute. “We cannot accept mediocrity,” he told reporters. “The last 15 minutes, when we lost the ball so many times in promising positions or moments that could lead to promising positions, is maybe not acceptable.”
The players were told where they went wrong in that loose spell between the 88th and 96th minutes, and were shown video analysis as further evidence.
Those eight minutes included a move breaking down because Cody Gakpo was offside, Virgil van Dijk failing to clear a header, Ibrahima Konate passing the ball out of play, Joe Gomez giving away possession, Mohamed Salah losing the ball close to his own penalty area — as shown in the screenshot below — and then, when Liverpool mounted a counter-attack, Gakpo wasting a cross with Trent Alexander-Arnold clearly offside.
And that wasn’t all.
Gakpo still had time to stray offside again, Konate and Ryan Gravenberch lost possession just a few seconds apart and both Alexis Mac Allister and Alexander-Arnold sent aimless clearances straight towards opposing players.
To cap it all, as shown below, Diogo Jota ran the ball out of play to allow one final opportunity for Wolves that, fortunately for Liverpool, was not taken.
Slot puffed out his cheeks and breathed a sigh of relief on the final whistle but was far from impressed. He asked for more control in the weeks ahead, and in the limited training time either side of the Champions League match against Bologna at Anfield on the Wednesday night, worked on ways to close out wins in a more authoritative way.
It wasn’t a case of major surgery being required, just minor treatment to smooth off the rough edges and remove that edge-of-your-seat anxiety from the final minutes of games.
It is why the reaction in Liverpool’s two Premier League victories since, against Crystal Palace (1-0) and Chelsea (2-1 on Sunday), has been as pleasing as the actual results. Granted, there have still been some hairy moments, which are perhaps inevitable when the opposing team go in search of an equaliser late on, but in both games, Liverpool managed the closing period much better than they did against Wolves.
The performance at Selhurst Park was an almost perfect example of how to wrap up a game.
Liverpool ran the ball into the channels and won corners and throw-ins deep in Palace’s half through the clever running of Gakpo, Jota and Luis Diaz. Their hold-up play was improved, the handling of possession much smarter and Wataru Endo also played a leading role as a late substitute. It was dogged, determined, and the type of result all title-winning teams need somewhere along the line.
Getting past Chelsea on Sunday was a sterner test. Limiting chances and shots at goal were the main aim in the closing period but Renato Veiga had a header from a free kick in the 93rd minute that fizzed over the crossbar but could have easily sneaked under it. Andy Robertson also threw his body at a late shot after Chelsea mounted one final assault, following a bizarre decision to award the visitors a foul after Liverpool striker Darwin Nunez went shoulder-to-shoulder with Veiga.
Yet how Liverpool looked after possession was much improved in comparison to the day that caused so much annoyance at Wolves. They were streetwise and moved the ball from front to back with simple passes to take the sting out of the game.
No careless mistakes, either. In forward areas, Diaz, Nunez and Dominik Szoboszlai made the right decisions to help the team over the line while late substitute Joe Gomez jumped into challenges to win back possession on a couple of occasions, as highlighted here:
With so much at stake, and up against better opponents — particularly Chelsea’s pacy young forward line — it would have been easy to lose focus in the moment, but that seems to be one of Liverpool’s greatest strengths right now. They don’t look like ever losing, and although the attacking play is not as exciting and free-flowing as it was under Slot’s predecessor Jurgen Klopp, they appear to be a team more capable this season of sustaining a title charge.
Slot’s rallying cry at the back end of last month was to ask for the uncertainty to be removed in games, and it’s clear there has been an improvement since, starting with the 2-0 defeat of Bologna.
Clearly, Slot is a perfectionist. Before last weekend, he acknowledged that he would have liked more breathing space in each of Liverpool’s victories so far. “We’ve won every game we deserved to win but, in an ideal world, the difference between us and the other team would have been bigger,” he told UK broadcaster Sky Sports.
In some ways, the closing stages at Molineux were as frustrating as their only actual defeat this season, against Nottingham Forest two weeks earlier, because the performance was far removed from what he expected. But what has happened on the pitch since shows Liverpool are growing — and quickly.
(Top photo: Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
Gregg Evans is a Staff Writer for The Athletic covering Liverpool. Previously he reported on Aston Villa and spent over a decade at the Birmingham Mail covering West Midlands football. His time with Villa included the drop into the Championship and then an incredible return to European football. He also covers golf. Follow Gregg on Twitter @greggevans40
