Bullied by Man City: Liverpool’s weakness isn’t long balls, it’s physicality

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Liverpool were not up for the fight in their defeat at Man City, losing Arne Slot‘s non-negotiable to the opposition, and not for the first time this season. Slot admitted after the 3-0 defeat that his tactics did not work, as “we struggled a lot with them bringing so many players into the centre of the pitch.” He then added: “I would first and foremost look to the game plan, of us and them, and not blame my players at all because in the second half, when we were doing better, you could see we were winning more duels, which did not result in a goal, but we did deserve one in the second half.” Despite his assertion of an improved win rate in the second half, as per FotMob, Liverpool won only 13 duels compared to Man City‘s 24, after also losing the first-half count 24-18.

Only 4 players won more duels than they lost Liverpool have lost four successive away games in the league for the first time since 2012, and won the duel count in only one of those fixtures. After his first game at Ipswich, he pointedly said: “First thing I said [during the half-time break] was we don’t have to speak about tactics if we lose so many duels, and that’s what we did.

“I didn’t see them fight for it in the first half – we lost almost every long ball, every duel to both sides. Our problem was more that we lost too many duels – our defenders lost too many and our attackers didn’t win enough.” It encapsulates the current issue at hand, that Liverpool’s tactics are almost redundant if they lose more duels than they win, which they have done in six of the last 10 games.