Liverpool’s important 1-0 victory away at Inter last night was dominated by three talking points.
Was Ibrahima Konate’s goal wrongly disallowed? Was Florian Wirtz really fouled for the penalty that was scored by Dominik Szoboszlai? What’s the latest on Mohamed Salah? Since these points will be discussed at length elsewhere, here’s an analysis with no further mention of any of those topics.
Arne Slot’s switch to a diamond was not in the script at the start of the campaign, but with Liverpool looking vulnerable in central positions and his attackers showing little sign of developing relationships, the head coach is desperately trying to find some balance. After experimenting with the system in the 3-3 draw with Leeds United — when Liverpool seemed to be cruising to victory until a daft Konate tackle opened up the game — Slot doubled down on the classic diamond here, using a more structured midfield and two traditional strikers, Hugo Ekitike and Alexander Isak.
By and large, Liverpool played well in the system. There are obvious benefits to the diamond, but its obvious weaknesses also explain why it’s almost completely fallen out of favour in recent years. The centre of midfield looks stronger — when playing out from the back, Liverpool found the ‘fourth’ midfielder effectively against Inter’s trio.
Here’s Konate on the ball, with Inter’s midfielders pressing three of Liverpool’s midfielders. The spare midfielder is Curtis Jones on the near side. Look over at Szoboszlai towards the far side: he’s pointing for the pass to go to Jones. Look at Andy Robertson, in the bottom-left corner: he’s also pointing for the pass to go to Jones. Liverpool have a game plan.
And they carry it out. Konate has to be brave, turning inside and playing a crossfield ball across his own defence, but he understands the situation — Robertson is still pointing, incidentally — and Liverpool get the ball to Jones.
This then creates an ‘open’ situation in midfield. In this transition period, with Inter switching from a man-marking press to a zonal-marking block, gaps appear, and Jones can feed a pass through to Alexis Mac Allister.
Eventually, this move ends with Jones attempting a shot from the edge of the box. Liverpool’s diamond midfield, incidentally, is still intact.
Slot also changed things to good effect at half-time. In the first half, Ryan Gravenberch was asked to sit deep and help the centre-backs against Inter’s strike duo — almost as a third centre-back. Inter are brilliant at getting their strikers to come short and combine, so Gravenberch’s job was preventing that type of move.
But this essentially meant Liverpool were operating with ‘only’ three central midfielders against Inter’s three, so they were sometimes caught out when one of Inter’s centre-backs stepped forward to create an overload. Here’s Yann Bisseck suddenly dribbling forward, with Gravenberch in his deep holding role.
Gravenberch was slow to close him down, so Bisseck turned inside and had a shot, which was blocked.
But this changed at half-time. “In the second half, we pressed a bit higher,” Slot explained to Prime Sport after the game. “In the first half, we decided to keep a plus-one in the back, but then they made a few changes and it didn’t feel right to still do this in the second half. There were a few times (Inter defender) Manuel Akanji went all the way into the midfield. So we pressed them higher.”
Sure enough, here’s Gravenberch moving forward to press in midfield instead, releasing Szoboszlai to push up and press Yann Sommer, the Inter goalkeeper. Liverpool forced more turnovers high up the pitch and created some dangerous situations.
The strike partnership functioned less smoothly. Ekitike and Isak had to work the channels on the outside of Inter’s back three, often taking them too far apart. They didn’t pass to one another all night. At this point, Ekitike has shown he is combining with his team-mates more easily.
This wasn’t a strike partnership, it was just two soloists. Isak clearly looked annoyed when Ekitike attempted a shot from this narrow angle…
… and Isak had no thought to pass to any of his team-mates before attempting this off-balance shot.
Liverpool’s other issue was out wide. Joe Gomez can play right-back, but asking him to do so in combination with a diamond midfield, when he’s providing almost all the width, is a tough task.
Granted, this selection was probably partly for his height, in light of Liverpool’s defensive set-piece problems. Still, this cross was so bad that it actually looked more like a shot, although for a player with no goals from 276 senior games, we can safely assume that wasn’t his intention.
But Slot’s double change midway through the second half worked. Wirtz replaced Isak and buzzed around between the lines dangerously. Equally importantly, Conor Bradley — who assisted Ekitike’s second goal against Leeds on Saturday — was more comfortable than Gomez receiving the ball in the final third and played this good cutback for Ekitike with his first touch.
Ten minutes later, there was another sign of his understanding with Ekitike, when the right-back played a one-two to run in behind and shoot.
Sure, Liverpool were hardly playing liquid football, but they were defensively secure, winning possession in advanced positions, and getting the ball into the opposition’s box. They were the better team.
The diamond midfield is unlikely to be a long-term solution for Slot — the system has its limitations and tends to be ‘worked out’ by opponents after a few games — but as a temporary measure, when Slot has been under enormous pressure, it might just keep him in a job.
