Liverpool’s defeat to PSG certainly wasn’t Virgil van Dijk’s fault - but did offer some encouragement to Newcastle.
It was tense, even for a neutral, but Liverpool’s hopes of winning the Champions League in Arne Slot’s debut season were dashed from 12 yards on Tuesday evening. It was a rare stain on an otherwise immaculate campaign – but do the issues exposed by Paris Saint-Germain hint at further heartbreak on Sunday?
Just five days after a gruelling game against PSG, Slot’s side travel south to Wembley to take on Newcastle United in the EFL Cup final. You won’t find many bookies who don’t back Liverpool, but the issues raised in the Champions League might give Eddie Howe some hope of becoming the first Newcastle manager to lift a major domestic trophy in 70 years. Not that everyone commenting on Tuesday’s match necessarily nailed the real problems…
Rooney is wrong about ‘lazy’ Van Dijk but issues were exposed
Amazon Prime pundit Wayne Rooney was swift to mete out the blame for the decisive Ousmane Dembélé goal that eventually took the tie to penalties – he pinned it on Virgil van Dijk.
“They are trying to press the ball and Van Dijk gets lazy,” the former Manchester United forward said. “If you watch Van Dijk, he leaves a massive gap. If you switch off for one second at this level you get punished.”
Which would be a fairer assessment if the “massive gap” in question, to Dembélé, wasn’t created by him breaking through from midfield. Van Dijk took a split second to assess whether to press forward to plug the gap and decided to stay back to cover the angle to Bradley Barcola – almost certainly the right play, even if it didn’t work out.
Had Van Dijk stepped up to press Dembélé (who should, on paper, have been stopped from bursting forward by Alexis Mac Allister), he would have given the Frenchman two options: slide the ball right to Barcola, as he did, and then burst into the huge space suddenly left in behind Van Dijk; or try to beat Van Dijk one-on-one and head into the gap himself. Van Dijk was never getting to Dembélé quickly enough to make pressing the right call.
By holding his position, Van Dijk reduced the options. The pass to Barcola remained on, but now Van Dijk and Andrew Robertson could double up on him – or Dembélé could try to make a beeline for goal, likely resulting in a low-percentage long shot. Unfortunately for Liverpool, Barcola managed to thread the needle between Robertson and Van Dijk with his pass, Alisson and Ibrahima Konaté arrived at different conclusions as to what to do next, and Dembélé was presented with a fortuitous tap-in.
Perhaps, in misunderstanding Van Dijk’s decision (“lazy”, really?) Rooney offered an insight into his stuttering managerial career. After all, at the time of his New Year’s Day sacking by Plymouth Argyle, the Pilgrims were bottom of the Championship table and had conceded a massive 51 goals, comfortably the most in the division. He might not be the best pundit to explain defensive subtleties.
Still, just because Van Dijk shouldn’t shoulder the blame doesn’t mean that there weren’t problems – this was a tie that Liverpool deservedly lost. At times, it felt as though they were the dominant force on Tuesday evening but in the final analysis, it was the visitors who had more shots, more clear-cut chances, more expected goals and more possession, and that’s not to mention the one-sided game played out in Paris in the first leg.
What Liverpool demonstrated was that not only is it possible to catch their full-backs too far upfield and find space in behind, but that they also struggled to deal with fast runners coming at them from deeper positions. Both Robertson and Trent Alexander-Arnold lost more than half of their one-on-one duels with Barcola and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia had far too many opportunities to make hay.
The issue persisted in midfield, too, with Mac Allister and Ryan Gravenberch combining to win nine of 22 ground duels between them, while both allowed runners on and off the ball past at pace. Liverpool could (and probably should) have condensed the space between the back four and the central midfielders to compensate, but then they might have made it even easier for PSG to find space over the top.
Every team and every tactical system has weaknesses, of course, and Liverpool’s have rarely been exposed and often haven’t even appeared to have existed. They have succeeded this season by controlling tempo and possession, but when that’s taken away from them there is a vulnerability to quick forward running both through the centre and out wide. The question is – can Newcastle take advantage of that this Sunday?
Why defeat to PSG hands Newcastle some hope
On the one hand, PSG offered a blueprint for beating Liverpool to other teams. On the other hand, they didn’t suggest that it was easy to pull off. This isn’t the PSG of old – no longer a side assembled solely as an advert for Qatar, they’ve shed the superstar names and built something cohesive and, frankly, impressive. They’re unbeaten in Ligue 1 and the first leg defeat was their first and only reversal since November.
Basically, just because this PSG side pulled it off doesn’t mean that Newcastle can – but there are some stylistic similarities with may encourage Eddie Howe. In particular, Newcastle have a dynamic, aggressive midfield with players, especially Bruno Guimarães, who are happy to run with the ball and beat players at pace.
If they lean into that tendency and if Liverpool don’t close the gap between defence and midfield, there could be space and opportunities to exploit – and a more direct attacking scheme which exploited the middle of the pitch would perhaps help to ameliorate the damage done to their chances down the left wing by Lewis Hall’s ankle injury and Anthony Gordon’s needless suspension.
More important still, however, could be the physical impact of Tuesday night’s match. 120 minutes of hard yards visibly took a toll with Liverpool looking weary and low on energy throughout much of extra-time, and Slot’s determination to ignore opportunities to rest and rotate the squad looks more questionable in the wake of their Champions League exit.
Robertson and Mac Allister were the only two starters rested for the 3-1 weekend win over a relegation-bound Southampton side, while the likes of Mohamed Salah played the full 90 minutes – in retrospect, that looks like a dubious decision. Liverpool’s starting line-up will come into Sunday’s match at Wembley with far more minutes in their legs over the past fortnight. To make matters worse, Alexander-Arnold’s apparent ankle injury may well rule him out of the match too.
That’s partly the price teams pay for successful seasons, of course, but given the listless way that Liverpool played for the final 20 minutes or so of the match, one wonders whether Slot hasn’t pushed his luck too far. Liverpool have more healthy starting players than Newcastle, but do they have more that will come into the EFL Cup final at 100% playing capacity?
Time will tell. Rooney, who may not know much about defensive organisation but knows plenty about the day-to-day rigours of elite football, reckoned that Liverpool will have enough time to rest and recuperate and get back to their best. Should he be right on that score, at least, then Newcastle may well find it hard to get the albatross of their long trophyless run off of their collective neck.
Related topics:Champions LeagueWayne RooneyArne Slot
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