It is, but as an MO theirs seems to have no discernible weakness. They’ve lost just one league game now in a season and a half, which of course was to us, and I genuinely think that going forward, in the immediate future at least, we are the only team with the wherewithal to beat them again.
Variously, the back four seldom comes up to halfway like ours does, rather it sits a few yards deeper, so there’s rarely, if ever, space in behind when they come up against the likes of Vardy, and that notwithstanding TAA, Robertson, Gomez and VVD is probably the quickest back four in the world anyway. The midfield meanwhile is completely interchangeable (Henderson, Fabinho, Wijnaldom, Ox, Milner, Keita), all of a reasonable size and all absolute grafters, so they’re never affected in the way we are if say Kev, Ferna or Raz is missing, and they sit and wait for the opposition to come forward in the hope of turning the ball over and quickly releasing it to probably the quickest, most direct running forward trio in the game, who are able to go past isolated defenders in one on one situations 80% of the time. As an example last night they could have been 5-0 up after 20 odd minutes, as they picked Leicester off in this fashion again and again and again.
Nor can you park the bus against them like you can City with our lack of height, cos the two full backs specialise in flat, whipped crosses by the bucketload, and that grafting bully boy midfield will get into the box to assist the forwards in attempting to get on the end of them. Probably only Kev has a better repertoire of crosses in the English game.
All in all it makes them fantastically difficult to beat. You have to be able to pin them back and keep TAA and Robertson occupied, and we are virtually the only team with sufficient ball retention skills to do this, and even then it’s hard to sustain. You also can’t have a great big gap between your back four and your midfield like Leicester did, or Salah and Mane will run riot.
Pep showed he had the measure of Klopp last season at Anfield, when he detailed Walker and Mendy to sit back in support of the centre halves, rather than bomb forward as they usually do, and we played reasonably well there this season as well, the outcome hinging on Michael Oliver’s farcical disinclination to give any kind of adverse decision against them, ever.
The problem we have, is that there will be 3 or 4 occasions each season (and particularly this season), when we are ravaged by injury or are frustrated by compact defences, and it just doesn’t happen to them. Robertson, VVD, Mane, Salah and Firmino played in an astonishing 183 out of a possible 190 league games last season (38 x 5 players), and bar the one game recently when Klopp deliberately rested one or two of them, they have been ever present again this season. It’s an injury record that’s simply astonishingly good, and when you chuck in both VAR and PGMOL’s hilariously bent allocation of match officials, with Michael Oliver wheeled out against City, Leicester and Chelsea, then the odds are stacked against you.
They do occasionally have trouble with opponents who are tall, athletic and quick (Palace in the past with Zaha, Schlupp etc, and Watford last week with Sarr and Dacoure), but Lady Luck, in the form of soft penalties or keepers hurling the ball into their own net, always seems to get them out of jail.
City have a rebuilding job to do in the summer, with Kompany, Sane and Aguero, albeit that the latter isn’t leaving yet, all needing replacing, along with a decent left back. Pep has to get those purchases right (pace and power essential), cos if he doesn’t, the dippers are gonna win the league again and again.
