With Liverpool enduring some truly awful recent form, managing just twelve points from fourteen matches, this was as good a time as any for Wolverhampton Wanderers to put an end to their eight-match losing streak against the Reds.
Nuno Espirito Santo made one change to the team that drew with Aston Villa, replacing Leander Dendoncker with Willy Boly. Despite keeping the same attacking personnel, they changed its structure, moving Pedro Neto behind Willian José and Adama Traoré as they switched from a 3-4-3 to a 3-4-1-2.
Jürgen Klopp lined up with the same team that beat RB Leipzig in mid-week, sticking with Liverpool’s usual 4-3-3 formation.
Liverpool pressed high with their set-up lining up perfectly against Wolves’. The front three would press Wolves’ back three, with Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané curving their runs to block the passes out to the wing-backs and the full-backs pushing up if necessary to support the press. Georginio Wijnaldum and Thiago Alcântara would push up onto Ruben Neves and Joao Moutinho, while Fabinho guarded Neto and the two centre-backs each picked up a striker. This allowed Liverpool to disrupt Wolves’ build-up and win back the ball in their half a few times.
Wolves still managed to get forward though, as their attacking gameplan appeared to be based around long balls anyway. They would hit direct passes out to the right flank, usually to Nélson Semedo, although Adama Traoré would frequently pull out to the touchline too, using his dribbling and allowing Semedo to take his place inside. Ideally this would be done by drawing Liverpool over to the opposite flank first, however the passing quality of Moutinho, Neves and Conor Coady meant they could hit accurate flat passes out to the right with enough pace on them to ensure Liverpool weren’t immediately on top of them.
Liverpool found themselves able to work the ball forward by having Thiago drop in alongside Fabinho, leaving Neto outnumbered as the midfielders behind him were unwilling to follow Thiago and leave space in front of the defence.
Mané was Liverpool’s brightest player, finding pockets of space to pick up the ball, with Diogo Jota happy to drift out to the left to support him.
On the whole it was an uneventful first half though. Liverpool scored a goal just before half-time as they won the ball following a throw-in and broke forward three-on-three against Wolves’ backline, with Jota finishing against his former club.
The second half was more entertaining, however there was little strategic change. Wolves quickened the pace of their play and pushed men forward, while Liverpool did the opposite, happier to sit back and protect their lead. Mané dropping back on the left was particularly useful defensively, as it added an extra man to the area Wolves were targetting.
With Wolves forced into committing men forward in search of a goal, Liverpool had space to threaten on the counter several times.
It wasn’t a convincing win from Liverpool, but it was a win, with the players focussing on escaping with three much-needed points rather than looking to win hearts and minds.
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3 Responses
Great work!
what is the process that you go through to write these? do you see most of the tactics in real time during the game? or do you watch the replay of the games? great work btw.
Depends on whether I’m able to watch the game live or not but I pretty much have to watch a replay if only to find clips for the videos