Ruthless Reds proved Jürgen Klopp right
Liverpool's pressing was almost off the chart at Leeds on Monday
Liverpool are such a strange team this season. Their last two victories have been secured with 7-0 and 6-1 score lines, yet in the five matches between the wins over the Uniteds of Manchester and Leeds, the Reds lost to a newly promoted side and had three successive games in which they had a solitary shot in the second half.
2022/23 is feast or famine, thrive or dive. When it came to Mondays triumph at Elland Road, Jürgen Klopp was quick to highlight what he saw as the foundation for the much needed impressive performance.
“The moment of the game I enjoyed the most was the 92nd minute,” he said (via the Liverpool Echo). “The pressing, wow. I think it was already 5-1 or 6-1, and we lost the ball and four players chased it. Poor, poor play from Leeds in that moment. That’s the basis for the whole game.”
“From a counter-pressing point of view, it was definitely the best game we have played this season.” Klopp was obviously speaking from the heart in the immediate aftermath of the game, but there’s data which backs up the assertion. The numbers even make the case it was one of the elite pressing performances his side have delivered in the Premier League.
What will most please the man who famously described counter-pressing as his greatest playmaker is that Liverpool opened the scoring after winning the ball high up the pitch. Per The Analyst, it was only the second example this season of the Reds scoring after a high turnover (starting a possession sequence in open play and within 40m of the opposition goal).
Klopp’s side were joint-top of the division with seven such goals in 2021/22, and while that aspect of play has been largely absent for the last eight months, reclaiming it ahead of next season can only be a positive.
You can’t assess pressing by goals though; had Trent Alexander-Arnold been penalised for a handball in the build up to Cody Gakpo’s tap-in (as could easily have happened), it wouldn’t change that the Reds were frequently recovering possession. One thing which stood out a mile in the post-match data was that Liverpool made 21 tackles while their hosts made 13.
If we look back at the 285 league and European matches the Reds have played since the summer of 2017 (a.k.a. the Mohamed Salah era), we can see how impressive these simple numbers become. The win against Leeds was the 92nd instance of Liverpool making more tackles than their opponents. In this light, them doing so does not seem like a big deal.
But then the Reds often dominate possession – they’ve done so in 267 of the 285 games – leaving them fewer opportunities to dispossess opposing players. If we look for matches in which they’ve had more than 50 per cent possession and won the tackle count, our sample shrinks to 67 matches. However, factor in that we’re looking for games where our heroes made at least eight more than their rivals and we’re down to just 16 games which fit our increasingly granular bill.
If you want a tackle edge of greater than seven while having 73 per cent possession, as Liverpool did at Leeds, there are no other examples. Even recording more tackles full stop while having that great a proportion of the attempted passes has not happened since the 5-0 win at Watford in October 2021.
We can also compare the Reds’ pressing at Elland Road against all 288 league games they have played under Klopp. To do this, we must consult Understat’s PPDA (passes allowed per defensive action in the opposition half) metric. By this measure, Liverpool’s figure of 4.28 is their 16th best since October 2015.
None of these impressive numbers can guarantee success. Liverpool performed broadly similarly on the tackle front in their recent loss at Bournemouth, and had a stronger PPDA performance when drawing 1-1 with Crystal Palace in the opening home match of 2022/23. But the Reds certainly showed what can be achieved when their defensive work rate meets with Klopp’s satisfaction, as Leeds unfortunately discovered.