Match date: 19 January 2013

Fluidity in Possession

Liverpool came into the match in fairly good form, losing to Manchester United in their last game, but showing good signs in the second half as they pegged their rivals back a bit. They were probably especially looking forward to playing Norwich as earlier in the season they beat the Canaries 5-2 at Carrow Road, with Luis Suarez not only bagging a hat trick in that match, but the previous fixture against Norwich as well. Liverpool supporters also got to see the real potential of how new signing Daniel Sturridge will fit into what was an almost full strength Liverpool side.

Sturridge’s inclusion meant that Raheem Sterling would start on the bench and Liverpool would field Suarez, Sturridge, and Stewart Downing as their front three. Lucas Leiva, Jordan Henderson, and Steven Gerrard made up the midfield.

At Chelsea, when played, Sturridge played mostly as a right winger, cutting in onto his favoured left foot, but he has said, as has Brendan Rodgers, that his best position would be through the middle. With the goal scoring form of Suarez this season, supporters have been wondering where he would play and the answer really came with the fluidity of the six players mentioned above and a dominating display by Liverpool.

This is how Brendan Rodgers’ team could have looked on paper, based on how Liverpool have set up this season:

You could rearrange Gerrard and Henderson, as well as put Sturridge through the middle, Downing on the right, and Suarez on the left, but the most important thing this shows is the balance to both sides of the pitch. Usually, that balance is maintained as Sterling and Downing or Suso have gotten most of the starts and play as inverted wingers on the left and right, respectively.

With the introduction of Sturridge into the team though, Liverpool’s team were much more lopsided than it has appeared in any other match this season. Below is what the starting positions looked like for most of the match:

Sturridge could consistently be seen starting from the right side of the field and drifting inside and working his way into the penalty area. Downing too would start many of his moves from the right, starting a bit deeper than Sturridge. This obviously allowed Downing to cut inside on to his favoured left foot, but when Norwich were able to get possession of the ball, he was also able to offer support to young Andre Wisdom, who also managed to work his way up the pitch frequently.

Jordan Henderson made a massive game, adding a lot of energy to the midfield, keeping the ball well, passing well, and got himself a thumping goal to open up the game’s scoring. He would drift to the left side of the field and then make diagonal moves back to the middle throughout the game which really opened up a lot of space for Glen Johnson to run the left wide area as if he were a left winger. Henderson would also react to Downing’s movement. If Downing found himself drifting in and getting involved in play on the left side of the pitch, Henderson would fill the space on the right.

The movement was very fluid when Liverpool had the ball and were looking to penetrate and when they lost the ball, they looked to get back into their shape, something that would look a bit more like a diamond middle four with Lucas the deepest, Suarez the highest, Henderson on the left, and Gerrard on the right. Downing would stick mostly to the right as well. Below is the basic movement for each player, blue represents their movement when Liverpool were without the ball and red shows their movement when Liverpool were in control.

Rodgers’ side were able to pick apart Norwich with their fluid movement, supported by their short passing. Liverpool completed 90% of their 694 attempted passes, with the top passer being Steven Gerrard, who completed 107 or his 115 attempted passes. Sturridge and Suarez were able to get goals as well and showed signs of creating a very good partnership.

Glen Johnson: Liverpool’s Dani Alves

Prior to Dani Alves’ move to Barcelona, Rafa Benitez was hoping to bring him from Sevilla to Liverpool. It didn’t come to pass due to the funds made available to Benitez by Hicks and Gillett and Alves went on to become a brilliant partner for Messi on the right side of the pitch at Barcelona and an increasingly important piece in Pep Guardiola’s tiki-taka philosophy.

I’ve talked about this briefly in the past; about Dani Alves’ role at Barcelona. At his best, Alves is the premium mold of the modern full back. He constantly runs the right flank and adds width to Barcelona’s attack, sometimes acting as a right winger. His runs forward are effective as he’s scored 12 goals and has recorded an absolutely incredible 74 assists for Barcelona during his 5 years with the Catalan side.

Glen Johnson has always been, I’d say wrongly, slated for the defending side of his game, but has always been known as a quality attacking full back and has scored some quality goals throughout his career. However, when Rodgers took over Liverpool Football Club, his role was always going to be increasingly important. Rodgers likes for his centre backs to push wide to allow his full backs to become wing backs and contribute significantly to the attack, providing the width rather than the, usually, inverted wingers.

This season, Johnson has been one of Liverpool’s best players on both sides of the ball. During this match though, with Rodgers’ tactical tweaking, he was able to dominate an entire side of the field as Dani Alves has shown he can do at Barcelona. Johnson’s average position against Norwich was about 15 yards inside the opposition’s half. In comparison, Downing’s average position was also just about 15 yards inside Norwich’s half. With this, Johnson caused problems, not only did he grab an assist, but he forced Robert Snodgrass to track him back, effectively becoming another right full back for Norwich. Snodgrass recorded 5 successful tackles on the day, 4 of which were a few yards outside of his penalty area near the side line where Johnson ran with pleasure. The few times he couldn’t track back quickly enough while Norwich were on the counter, one of Lucas or Gerrard would slot in.

As mentioned above, Dani Alves was an incredibly important part of Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona side and allowed Pep to experiment with tactics without having to worry about the side of the field. He increasingly played with 3 defenders and allowed Alves the freedom of a right winger. Though Rodgers’ tiki-taka like style at Liverpool is just in its first phase, the ability of Glen Johnson to dominate one side of the pitch as he did today, taking the roles of both a full back and winger, will allow Rodgers to freely tweak his tactics and exploit opposition’s weaknesses.