Stoke v Liverpool analysis

Yet another sign of inconsistency from Liverpool. The comfortable 4-0 thrashing of Fulham seems a long time ago and Wednesday night's performance goes another way to show just how far they have to go if they want to be in the Champions League. Over the last two and a half seasons, Liverpool have put in their three worst half season performances in the Premier League - 25 points from the first 19 league games of Roy Hodgson's and Brendan Rodgers' tenures and a mere 18 points in the second half of last season under Kenny Dalglish.

Stoke pressing

Since the start of the season, there has been a very obvious way to attack Liverpool. The short passing build up at the back with the centre backs opening up and the full backs moving into the midfield line has been exposed even since the pre-season game against Roma. In that game, Jay Spearing was shown to be vulnerable in the role as the pivot in front of the centre backs. Roma’s high press caused numerous problems in that area and the space between the backline was then exploited quickly. 

Since then opposition teams have gone into games realising that winning the ball in midfield can be a key defensive and attacking weapon against Liverpool. If you press high: a) Liverpool don’t have the quality on the ball to consistently retain possession under high pressure. And b) there is a large amount of space between the back four if you do win it. 

Tony Pulis came out with two main plans off the ball. The first was the high collective pressing of Liverpool’s build up from the back. 

 Here, Jones and Walters have forced the ball back to Reina in the Liverpool goal. As he plays it short to Agger, Stoke continue their press.

Liverpool continue their short passing game from the back, allowing Stoke to confine the area and make the pitch small. Each player in the passing line is marked by a Stoke player, restricting Liverpool's build up.

 

Shelvey comes too deep to receive possession from Agger and is immediately faced with a difficult situation. Stoke are marking each player available to Shelvey, whose options are limited because he has been forced to face his own goal. Under pressure from two Stoke players, one from behind and one from in front, he loses the ball. That regain for Stoke led to two minutes of pressuring Liverpool in their own half which resulted in them taking the lead.

A lot was made during the game of this aggressive pressing from Stoke. Without doubt it had a big impact on Liverpool's capacity to build up in the first two phases of possession. However, high pressing is not enough to defend for the whole 90 mins when you only have 42% possession. You will always have to drop off and withstand pressure in your own half. And Stoke organised this well.

 Here you can see Stoke have withdrawn to a fairly low compact block in their own half, a complete contrast to the way they pressed Liverpool high up the pitch. Here Lucas has plenty of time and space in midfield. Not a single Stoke player is trying to close him down. Instead they are trying to retain a good solid shape behind the ball and mark the players within the passing line for Lucas. In short, they are prioritising the possible players to receive the ball rather than the man on the ball.

Lucas plays a square pass to Enrique on the left. This acts as a trigger for Stoke to pressure again. Suarez comes short but is marked by a defender, as is Shelvey behind him. Enrique begins to be put under light pressure while Walters moves across to mark Lucas.

As it's played back to Lucas, he is now under pressure from Walters. Meanwhile, Stoke again are marking the players in the passing line - Enrique, Shelvey and Suarez coming short are tracked.

This marking forces Lucas into a risky forward pass to Suarez who can't control the ball under pressure from behind and Stoke regain.

Another example is shown here

Lucas (circled) has the ball under no pressure in midfield. The four players ahead of him are all individually marked. Again Stoke are prioritising the players in the passing line rather than the player on the ball.

Lucas switches it short to Gerrard, also under no pressure from the Stoke midfield. He plays it across to the left to Enrique.

As Enrique receives it, he plays it short to Suarez who is being marked by the centre back. The ball is returned to Enrique yet the centre back stays with Suarez. Notice how deep the other centre back and left back are for Stoke, despite the space left behind Suarez's marker. As Enrique receives the ball, Gerrard begins to make a run beyond Suarez.

 

As Gerrard makes the run past Suarez towards the open space, Suarez's marker backs off him to deal with Gerrard's run and Enrique is forced to play it back to Lucas who is now being closed down.

Lucas recieves it under pressure and ends up playing a loose pass out of play for a Stoke throw in.

There were a few ways for Liverpool to deal with this system. One of them was by direct running at players. If a player granted space in the middle could make a run forward under no pressure, then he could break Stoke's organisation.

Agger picks up possession at the back. Again, instead of being closed down, Stoke are concentrating on marking the possible players he could pass to. Consequently, Agger has plenty of space to run into without being put under any pressure at all from a Stoke player.

As he goes over the halfway line, this strategy is even more clearly shown. In the first shot, Walters is the natural player to go and close Agger down. Yet instead, he retreats in the middle. Suso and Suarez (circled) are being tracked individually by their markers. Not a single player is going to close the man on the ball down. Instead Stoke are prioritising the front players who could receive the ball by marking them individually. Only as Agger gets a full twenty yards into the Stoke half, does he get put under any pressure.

This concentration on individual marking has consequences. In an interview in August, Luis Suarez made an interesting point about the exploitation of space. Asked to expand on a remark he had made about teams in England being tactically poor he said:

"If I am playing centre forward here and I drop off the front into this area, both centre backs might come with me in England. And then a team-mate can go into the space and be one on one with the goalkeeper."

The chief innovator of how teams mark in open play, Arrigo Sacchi, has said on many occasions that the main focus for a defender has to be the space rather than the man. Following the man has consequences.

Lucas has the ball in the midfield. Again he is under no pressure. Stoke are concentrating on closing down the area for the forward pass to go.

Suso makes a movement towards the left, opening up space for the pass to Suarez coming between the lines.

Here is a great example of precisely the sort of move Suarez talked about in the quote earlier. As the ball is played into him coming short, he is double marked by two Stoke defenders. This leaves open space behind him to be exploited.

As Suarez returns the pass to Lucas, Shelvey makes a run behind into the space that has been created. Lucas goes for the ball over the top which Shelvey can't quite get under control. This was arguably Liverpool's best move of the half and showed the sort of movements they had to make in order to penetrate Stoke.
 

Sloppy Liverpool

However this did not happen often enough and Liverpool were too sloppy, with and without the ball. The right thing for them to do was to starve Stoke of the ball, stretch them horizontally by switching the play and take advantage of the space between the lines. Instead, Liverpool gave possession away too easily, allowing Stoke to put the centre backs under pressure with long balls. There were other tactical problems as well. Shelvey sometimes came too deep to recieve the pass, which isolated Suarez. They didn't make the best of the space created on the outside by the wingers moving inside. Nor did they use the space behind the full backs on the counter attack. In short, although Stoke were very good, Liverpool didn't exploit their weaknesses.

Brendan Rodgers brought Sterling on at half time in order to try and stretch Stoke in the wide areas. It was the right substitute to bring on (albeit possibly the wrong player to bring off in Suso) and it almost paid off immediately when he stretched Stoke within two minutes of the restart crossed it to Suarez who could have scored. Apart from that, Liverpool didn't particularly use Sterling very well. On a number of occasions he pulled wide and deep for the switch of play so he could get 1v1 with the full back. However, this pass was often neglected and he then had to move inside in order to create space for Enrique moving forward on the outside.

Could Rodgers have done more other than that? In hindsight he might have started with three centre backs in order to provide cover against Walters and Jones. However, he couldn't have foreseen Agger's poor performance nor Liverpool's general lack of intelligence. Instead this match will have proved to Brendan Rodgers that Liverpool have to have reinforcements in order to perform more consistently. Without that, they'll stay a mid-table side.

Looking at Man City's 'zonal marking'

Over the past few weeks, zonal marking has again taken a bit of battering. Only on Saturday, Jamie Redknapp was readily criticising use of the system during Man United's win over Arsenal, even though zonal marking had nothing to do with the goal he was talking about. Surprisingly he wasn't so quick to point out a set piece chance for Arsenal in the first half where a simple block from Mertesacker on a man-marker left Giroud free in space for a great chance.

Because of this, you may forgive me for being surprised it took over half an hour for Andy Townsend to have a go at zonal marking (or 'zoning' as he called it) in Man City's draw with Ajax on Tuesday night. This time it was the old 'players don't know whose job is whose', even though if you bothered to study the system, it's generally pretty clear.

There are worse cliches trotted out admittedly. 'A zone has never scored a goal' is a big favourite for many clueless pundits, completely ignoring the fact that most teams pretty much use zone defending in open play. They also ignore the fact that from free-kicks in certain positions, like out wide, teams pretty much always use one line of zonal.

And that brings about another thing. Just like in open play where teams use a mixture of man marking and zonal marking, teams who use so-called zonal marking from set pieces are often instead using a mixture of both. This varies admittedly. Some have players on the posts (another example of zonal marking which is never pointed out), some have a different amount of players defending in different positions. The most important thing however is how the players perform it.

Let's concentrate on the second goal Man City conceded against Ajax:

 

As you can see, Man City are defending with one line of man-to-man and one line of zonal - three players in front marking one player each and then four players behind marking zonally.

As the corner comes in, Toure lets De Jong run off him. Arguably he should try and slow De Jong's run down by blocking him to stop the momentum. However the biggest mistake here comes from Gareth Barry at the near post who simply fails to attack the ball.

Far from blaming the marking system, the main reason it failed was through players not doing their jobs.

Why didn't City have men on the posts then? Well this is another thing that often gets pointed out when goals are conceded from corners. There's not necessarily a right thing to do in that situation. Some teams play with men on the posts, some teams choose not to. However, there are valid reasons for both.

Admittedly you may clear three or four a season off the line if you have men on both posts. But instead of concentrating on that, why not have more players focussing on winning the first ball from the corner? Having no players on the post means that you can leave one or two players up the pitch, you can maybe have one or two on the edge of the box and you'll still be able to defend properly.

Another reason for not having men on the posts is the second ball. Many teams are not good enough at pushing out from corners. They can get trapped in their own area and inevitably make mistakes leading to a goal or penalty. If you have one or two players marking posts then it makes it difficult to play offside when the second ball comes in. Take a look at this example from Bayern Munich vs Borussia Dortmund last year.

 

As Dortmund take a short corner, you can see Arjen Robben standing on the far post.

 



 

Bayern clear the first ball that comes into the box. Meanwhile, Robben is standing just in front of the post.

 

 

However as Dortmund win the second ball, Robben doesn't get out quick enough, playing Lewandowski onside. In this situation, it was Lewandowski who got the final touch for the goal which ended up winning the match for Borussia Dortmund.

 

 

Bear in mind this is not a piece intended to say that one way is better than the other. There are arguments for and against each system. The objective truth though is that the performance of each system is down to the players and if you're so keen to blame someone for conceding set piece goals, blame them not the system.



Man City 1-1 Dortmund - Away side dominate but don't win

Man City started with both Aguero and Dzeko up front, combined with Silva and Nasri in the wide positions. Nastasic started at the back.

Dortmund set out closer to a 4-5-1 shape with Gotze on the right, Kuba inside of him with Reus on the left.

First half

Jurgen Klopp said yesterday that his side had a plan to stop City playing and they stuck to their word. Dortmund defended as a 4-5-1, looking to stop City playing through the middle to Silva and Nasri between the lines. The away side's plan defensively was to start their press around the half way line especially the City holding players of Toure and Garcia when they had their back to the play. With Mancini's side using very slow transitions, the Germans were able to get behind the ball quickly into their shape and stop City playing penetrating passes down the middle.

This meant a number of things. The main thing was that it was almost impossible for City to play a forward pass between the lines. Two of their biggest chances in the whole match, came from two of the only times they'd manage to turn between Dortmund's defence and midfield.

The second thing it meant was that Yaya Toure was unable to make runs from holding midfield; he was pressed when he received it close to the half way line and Dortmund were so compact that it was very difficult to find space in the middle. Even when City went wide, Dortmund pressured with three players stopping penetration.

Dortmund pressing with three players in the wide areas

City therefore only really looked a threat when they went long for Dzeko (who was caught offside four times) or on quick transitions, few and far between.

Dortmund's attack was also extremely impressive. Klopp's side use of pressing triggers (waiting for loose pass, horizontal pass, one player presses then the whole whole team presses), led to some very dangerous counter attacks and it was only because of Joe Hart that it was 0-0 at half time. Dortmund had especially targeted the right hand side when attacking with Gotze, Piszcek and Kuba all drifting towards that area and the combination play on the edge of the box was superb. Add to that the factor that both full backs got high, allowing Gotze and Reus to move between the lines with Gundogan and Kuba meant they could support Lewandowski well from midfield and then press high when they lost possession.

Second half

Things didn't particularly change at the start of the second half; City were still moving the ball horizontally side to side in deep positions and generally unable to penetrate vertically, though they were looking for Dzeko more in the air.

The first main change from City came in the 57th minute, bringining on Kolarov for Nasri. It made some sense - they weren't getting any joy from their usual precise build up and having a more direct route was worth the risk. However the change to a 3-4-1-2 didn't really work. It allowed the full backs to pressure higher for Dortmund against the wing backs and defensively City looked very suspect with Dortmund able to continually test Joe Hart. In the 61st minute Reus followed the pressing trigger of Gundogan winning the ball high up the pitch and beating Joe Hart.

Mancini soon changed it back to a slightly lopsided 4-2-2-2 with Kolarov playing left wing and Zabaleta moving back to make a back four. However their transitions were still too slow, Dortmund were covering the space yet also playing with a high line to stop themselves from getting pushed too deep and ready to regain and counter attack from the middle of the field. Even when City went long, Dortmund were winning the second balls and playing out from the back well. City's only major threat was Aguero's mobility behind the Dortmund centre backs. It took a very generous penalty decision for City to break through.

Conclusion

Dortmund got their gameplan pretty much spot on. They kept their shape, made it impossible for City to find penetrating passes down the middle and created chance after chance in attack. They probably should have made the most of their chances but they dominated City right from the start. Mancini's side will have to improve their balance and intensity if they're to get through this group stage.