With the games coming thick and fast, Jurgen Klopp is struggling to deal with the heavy schedule, only worsened by an injury crisis in the squad.
Liverpool played a weakened team in their loss against Atalanta in mid-week, but a key clash with Ajax this week means the starting eleven wasn’t back up to full-strength for the early kick-off. Roberto Firmino, Diogo Jota, Andy Robertson and Fabinho all returned in Liverpool’s usual 4-3-3 formation, however Nathaniel Phillips took Joel Matip’s place in defence, Takumi Minamino started in midfield and Neco Williams continued at right-back. It was a mixture of first-teamers and squad players.
Always changing shape, Graham Potter opted for a 3-4-3 formation, making two changes to the team that beat Aston Villa. Joël Veltman and Aaron Connolly replaced the suspended Tariq Lamptey and former Liverpool man Adam Lallana in Brighton’s starting eleven.
Both sides’ attacking centred around isolating the opposition backline but, in practice, they had the most success just by hitting balls in behind for the forwards to chase.
Brighton would defend in a 3-4-1-2 shape which saw them line up pretty perfectly against Liverpool’s shape. The two forwards would line up against the centre-backs, the other would drop off onto Georginio Wijnaldum, Yves Bissouma and Pascal Gross matched up against James Milner and Minamino, the wing-backs would push up high into Liverpool’s half to close down the full-backs, while the back three each picked up one of Liverpool’s forward trio.
The weakness with this approach was that it left Brighton with no spare man to cover any gaps that opened up, which played into the hands of Firmino. The Brazilian would look to drop off constantly, forcing a Brighton centre-back to either follow him and leave a gap, or hold their position and give him space – which could be large if Milner or Minamino could bait Brighton’s midfielders forward.
Firmino set up the first disallowed goal when he dropped off and Adam Webster was reluctant to follow him, controlling a long pass from Alisson Becker and looping the ball in behind for Mohamed Salah to finish, only for the Egyptian to be the victim of a tenuous offside call.
Brighton manipulated Liverpool’s pressing by outnumbering them at the back. Liverpool’s forwards would push up to press the centre-back three-against-three, but with the wing-backs wide and two midfielders in the gaps between them, the forwards couldn’t cut off all the passing angles into the midfield. Outnumbered four-to-three there, Liverpool’s midfield couldn’t cover them all either, with Milner and Minamino usually pushing up to get tight to Bissouma and Gross, leaving the wing-backs free.
To stop the wing-backs from simply picking the ball up in space on the flanks, Robertson and Williams would push up down the flanks to close them down, but this left Liverpool three-against-three at the back.
Regardless, Brighton struggled to carve out decent opportunities from this. Having to control long aerial passes to play over the first line of Liverpool’s press and with Robertson and Williams out quickly to meet them, Brighton’s wing-backs rarely had time on the ball to pick out good passes to the forwards running in behind.
Unsurprisingly given only one of them is part of the regular set-up, Liverpool’s defensive line was poorly organised. Neither Fabinho or Phillips are fast and so aren’t ideal for a high line at the best of times, but each had their own way of dealing with it. Fabinho would try to hold the line, while Phillips would try to drop off to give himself more of a chance against the pace of Brighton’s attackers.
This meant Brighton’s forwards could make runs in behind Fabinho and still be onside, while the Brazilian, showing he’s a midfielder rather than a natural centre-back, would be caught square, having to turn a full 180° to defend any balls played behind him. This left Alisson having to regularly rush out and sweep up behind the backline to stop Brighton getting clear through.
With his own problems, Phillips wasn’t exactly in the position to guide Williams through the game. The young right-back is caught in a vicious circle: he looks devoid of confidence and needs game time to acclimatise himself to high level football, but he makes mistakes due to his inexperience that only knock him back further. The Welshman had a solid half except for his most significant contribution: giving away a penalty with a clumsy challenge.
Williams was brought off at half-time, replaced by Jordan Henderson. Milner took his place at right-back and Wijnaldum moved forward in midfield as Henderson took up his position at the base.
Potter made his own changes though. Brighton began to drop off a lot of the time rather than pressing. They typically formed a 3-5-1-1 shape, with Leandro Trossard, who had replaced Neal Maupay due to injury in the first half, tucking into midfield while Danny Welbeck played off of Connolly in attack. This left less space behind the defensive line for the likes of Salah to run into, but also handed momentum over to Liverpool.
Liverpool took the lead not through any real pattern of play, but simply by getting the ball to Jota in a little pocket of space in the final third. Rather than snatching at a shot, the Portuguese took his time to open up a clear sight on goal, evading the challenges of Trossard and Adam Webster then finishing at the near post.
Brighton were having their own spells of possession too though. Like Brighton, Liverpool, particularly after having taken the lead, began to sit off rather than expending energy chasing down the defenders. Brighton pass the ball well, so this enabled them to play around Liverpool and work the ball forward.
Brighton ended up equalising from a similar sort of position to Liverpool. There was no distinct pattern of play behind the move, simply moving the ball into a good position in the final third. Once they got it there, Liverpool depended on the brilliance of Jota, whereas Brighton won a penalty, albeit for something so negligible none of their players even appealed for it.
Liverpool can rightly feel hard done by – having, what looked to the naked eye at least, a legitimate goal chalked off and conceding a dubious one – however in terms of actual flow of play this was an even game, with Liverpool only really having the upper hand due to the superior quality of their individual players.
In previous games against Brighton, Liverpool have put in performances that made the competence of the referee irrelevant. Here, they didn’t.
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