It is impossible to sugarcoat this one: Liverpool’s performance on Wednesday evening was terrible.
It might be a cliche, but team strength and tactics do often go out of the window in a Merseyside derby. Despite Liverpool fighting for the league title, a contest at Goodison Park, under the lights, against an Everton side battling to stay in the division… Jurgen Klopp’s side would have known that the game would be a scrappy, aggressive clash in a raucous atmosphere.
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Did they put up enough of a fight? Their club captain didn’t think so.
Virgil van Dijk questioned the commitment and desire of his team-mates in an interview with Sky Sports after the game.
GO DEEPER
Van Dijk questions whether Liverpool 'really want to win the league'
“I’m very disappointed in so many ways and everyone has to look in the mirror, look at their performances, and if they really gave everything 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 — not winning challenges and giving the referee an opportunity to give free kicks like he did many times — we have no chance to win the title. It’s a tough one and we have to do much better against a side fighting against relegation.”
Van Dijk repeated the lack of desire among his team-mates to win their individual battles.
“It sounds simple but it starts with the fight and the will to win your challenges and be confident in scoring a goal. That is what we have been lacking and it’s a combination of a lot of things.”
The natural question is, who was he referring to? And, crucially, is Van Dijk blameless himself?
Teams rarely win all of their individual battles, but it is worth combing through the numbers on Liverpool’s success rate on the night.
Klopp’s side are typically aerially dominant, with no side having a higher average win rate than their 57 per cent this season. Against Everton, that win rate dropped to just 44 per cent — their fifth-worst return in a Premier League game this season. To spell it out: Liverpool lost more battles than they won in the air.
On the ground, a ‘duel’ can often be a nebulous metric, but Opta simply defines it as a 50-50 contest between two players of opposing sides. The Athletic have previously shown that winning your duels corresponds to an increased likelihood of winning a game.
Wednesday’s duel win rate of 43 per cent was similarly below their average for the season (49 per cent), so maybe Van Dijk did have a point on both fronts.
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To duel or not to duel: Does winning your battles win you more games?
It was not so much about the volume of duels won or lost, but the way they were competed. A salient example was the battle between Ibrahima Konate and Dominic Calvert-Lewin.
Calvert-Lewin targeted Konate for a lot of the game and could see that he had the beating of him from the second minute. Below are four examples of Everton’s No 9 bullying Konate 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 come as a surprise to Liverpool. Across the game, Everton went long with 30 per cent of their passes — their second-highest rate in the Premier League this season behind… their last game against Liverpool in October (32 per cent).
It might sound agricultural in the modern game, but momentum built with every aerial win that Everton registered. It gave oxygen to the home side and stripped it from Liverpool one duel at a time.
The momentum was building for Everton, but not without Liverpool’s help. If there is one rule of playing against a Sean Dyche side, it would be to not give away any silly free kicks anywhere 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 side. So “giving the referee an opportunity to give free kicks” (in Van Dijk’s words) should have been low down on the to-do list.
Instead, Liverpool gave away cheap fouls to allow Everton to exercise their biggest strength. When accounting for opponent touches this season, that volume of adjusted fouls was the fourth highest across their Premier League campaign.
As shown below, there were naive challenges from Alexis Mac Allister, Curtis Jones, Luis Diaz, and Wataru Endo — often when the opposing player was facing their own goal with little threat. Especially in the first half an hour, every foul sequentially instilled more confidence among the home side.
By contrast, there were times when Liverpool should have realised it was the right time to bring down their man. A 1-0 Everton could retreat from their own box and get a shot away without any Liverpool player sticking a foot in. From Konate being dragged out of position by Calvert-Lewin, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Mac Allister allowed Abdoulaye Doucoure to waltz into the final third with little trouble.
So, is Van Dijk blameless in all this?
Despite him being Liverpool’s captain and best defender, there were a few things to pick out with his performance.
Van Dijk largely dealt well with Calvert-Lewin when the Everton striker ventured over to his side, but his passive defensive approach — which is so often a strength as Liverpool’s calming presence — often worked against him as Calvert-Lewin grew in confidence.
There were multiple occasions when Van Dijk elected to step off Calvert-Lewin in an aerial challenge, allowing him to bring the ball down as Everton moved up the pitch. He might not have lost an aerial battle in the examples below, but largely because he did not engage in them.
There was a comedy of errors from Liverpool for Everton’s opener, but it is worth going back to the first contact when the free kick was launched into the box.
A generous perspective would be that James Tarkowski blocked Van Dijk to allow Jarrad Branthwaite to win the first header, but a closer inspection suggests Van Dijk largely mistimed his header — with Dominik Szoboszlai doing little to stop Branthwaite at the back post.
The same was true of Everton’s second, in which Tarkowski joined Van Dijk at the far post, but he was hardly pinning the Liverpool centre-back to the floor. As you can see from the second slide below, Tarkowski was actually facing away from Van Dijk as Calvert-Lewin leapt up.
Poor timing from Van Dijk and weak defending from Alexander-Arnold places the fault more at Liverpool’s door.
In many ways, Van Dijk’s assessment of his team-mates was accurate, with few players ending the game with any credibility — but Liverpool’s captain is not immune from criticism himself.
Individual mistakes, a lack of urgency, and a lack of quality all over the pitch were thrown into the melting pot to leave Liverpool’s title chances all but over.
(Header photo: Michael Regan/Getty Images)
