There’s no sugarcoating this one: Liverpool’s performance on Wednesday night was terrible.
It may be a cliché, but a team’s strength and tactics often go out the window during a Merseyside derby. Even though Liverpool are fighting for the league title, a match at Goodison Park, under the lights, against an Everton side struggling to stay in the division… Jurgen Klopp’s side would have known the match would be a scrappy clash and aggressive in a noisy atmosphere.
Did they fight enough? Their club captain didn’t think so.
Virgil van Dijk questioned his teammates’ commitment and desire in an interview with Sky Sports after the match.
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Van Dijk questions whether Liverpool ‘really want to win the league’
“I’m very disappointed in many ways and everyone has to look in the mirror, look at their performances, and did they really give it their all and do they really want to win the league,” Van Dijk said.
“We are still fighting and still have games after tonight, but if we play like we did today – without winning any challenges and giving the referee the opportunity to award free kicks like he did today. ‘ve done it many times – we have no chance of winning the title. It’s a tough task and we need to do much better against a team fighting relegation.
Van Dijk reiterated his teammates’ lack of desire to win their individual battles.
“It sounds simple, but it starts with fighting and wanting to win your challenges and being confident to score a goal. That’s what we were missing and it’s a combination of a lot of things.
The natural question is: who was he referring to? And, above all, is Van Dijk himself beyond reproach?
Teams rarely win all of their individual battles, but it’s worth reviewing Liverpool’s success rate figures that night.
Klopp’s side are generally dominant aerially, with no team having an average win rate higher than their 57% this season. Against Everton, that win rate fell to just 44 percent – their fifth worst return in a Premier League match this season. To put it plainly: Liverpool have lost more battles than they have won in the air.
On the field, a “duel” can often be a nebulous measure, but Opta defines it simply as a 50-50 fight between two players from opposing sides. Athleticism have already shown that winning duels corresponds to an increased probability of winning a game.
Wednesday’s duel win rate of 43 percent was also lower than their season average (49 percent), so perhaps Van Dijk had a point on both fronts.
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It wasn’t so much about how many duels were won or lost, but how they were fought. A striking example is the battle between Ibrahima Konate and Dominic Calvert-Lewin.
Calvert-Lewin targeted Konate for much of the match and could see he was beating him from the second minute. Below are four examples of Konate being bullied by Everton’s number 9 in the first half alone. In the end, Konate resorted to fouling Calvert-Lewin and was eventually replaced by Jarell Quansah after 63 minutes.
This tactic should not have surprised Liverpool. Throughout the match, Everton were long with 30 percent of their passes – their second highest rate in the Premier League this season behind… their last match against Liverpool in October (32 percent).
It may seem agricultural in the modern game, but momentum has been built with every aerial victory Everton recorded. This gave the home team oxygen and took them away from Liverpool one duel at a time.
Momentum was building for Everton, but not without help from Liverpool. If there is one rule to playing against a Sean Dyche team it would be to not give away any silly free kicks in the first two thirds of the pitch.
Everton have scored 7.5 goals per 100 set pieces this season – better than any other Premier League team. So, “giving the referee the opportunity to award free kicks” (in Van Dijk’s words) should have been low on the to-do list.
Instead, Liverpool committed cheap fouls to allow Everton to exert their greater strength. Taking into account opposition touches this season, this volume of adjusted fouls was the fourth highest in their Premier League campaign.
As shown below, Alexis Mac Allister, Curtis Jones, Luis Diaz and Wataru Endo made naive challenges – often when the opposing player was facing his own goal with little threat. Especially in the first half hour, each sequential foul instilled more confidence in the home team.
On the other hand, there were times when Liverpool should have realized it was the right time to bring down their man. A 1-0 Everton could pull out of their own box and shoot without any Liverpool player setting foot. From Konate being dragged out of position by Calvert-Lewin, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Mac Allister allowed Abdoulaye Doucouré to waltz into the final third with little trouble.
So, is Van Dijk innocent in all this?
Despite being Liverpool’s captain and best defender, there were a few takeaways from his performance.
Van Dijk largely handled Calvert-Lewin well when the Everton striker ventured alongside him, but his passive defensive approach – which is so often a strength like Liverpool’s calming presence – often worked against him as that Calvert-Lewin was gaining confidence.
There were several occasions where Van Dijk chose to pull back from Calvert-Lewin in an aerial challenge, allowing him to bring the ball down as Everton moved up the pitch. He may not have lost a dogfight in the examples below, but largely because he didn’t participate in one.
There was a comedy of errors from Liverpool for Everton’s opener, but it’s worth going back to the first touch when the free-kick was launched into the box.
A generous prospect would be that James Tarkowski blocked Van Dijk to allow Jarrad Branthwaite to win the first header, but closer inspection suggests that Van Dijk largely mistimed his header – with Dominik Szoboszlai doing little to stop Branthwaite at the second post.
The same was true for Everton’s second, in which Tarkowski connected with Van Dijk at the far post, but he barely tackled the Liverpool centre-back to the ground. As you can see in the second slide below, Tarkowski was actually facing Van Dijk as Calvert-Lewin pounced.
Van Dijk’s poor timing and Alexander-Arnold’s weak defending put more of the blame at Liverpool’s door.
In many ways, Van Dijk’s assessment of his teammates was accurate, with few players finishing the game with any credibility – but the Liverpool captain is not immune to criticism himself.
Individual errors, a lack of urgency and a lack of quality all over the pitch were thrown into the crucible to leave Liverpool’s title chances all but over.
(Header photo: Michael Regan/Getty Images)