The Merseyside Derby

Lineups

For the 222nd Merseyside Derby, Liverpool started without the services of Allen, Sakho, Agger, Johnson, and Lucas. Practically 3/4 of the defense as well as the only true defensive midfielder in the club. Everton were also hammered with injuries, playing without the likes of Distin, Oviedo, Coleman, and Deulofeu. Ross Barkley did make an appearance for the Toffees after he received a pain injection right before the match in order to power through a broken toe.

“Formations”

Now I’ve put that word in quotations for a specific reason: There are no such things as true formations. In the professional footballing world, players are classified into positions such as wingers, outside backs, center halves, etc. However, this is too limiting a title. Dani Alves may be a “right back”, but he’s more than capable of streaking up the field to play a winger’s role, as well as shifting laterally to tackle players while Pique drops back to cover his man. Football is a free-flowing game where “formations” change dozens of times throughout plays and matches on both sides. They are very simplified ways to put down the team sheet on paper, but aren’t to be seen as a constricting factor at all (you’ll see in this game). However, tentatively speaking, these are how to two sides lined up at kick off.





Injures, injuries, injuries

Injuries, both before and during the match played a huge role in the outcome. Liverpool’s back 4 have had struggles with keeping their defense healthy, with Flanagan just returning from injury about a week ago. Enrique’s knee injury early in the season has seen Cissokho step in as LB multiple times. Same goes for the generally rotating center backs, who were practically picked for Brendan due to injuries to both Sakho and Agger. Lucas’ aggravated knee injury from the Aston Villa match and Joe Allen’s injury saw Gerrard having to play the sole DM role, a position that is rather foreign for him. On the other side of the coin, Everton’s Bryan Oviedo had recently suffered a horrific broken leg from their cup tie against Stevenage. Sylvain Distin’s presence was also missed in the Toffee’s back 4 as Alcaraz and Jagielka were paired together as center backs. Deulofeu’s blistering pace and threat down the wings was also a non-issue for the Reds, as the Barcelona man was out with a hamstring injury. However, the injury that most shaped the course of the match had to be Lukaku’s ankle ligament damage during the aftermath of Steven Gerrard’s goal. His temmate, Gareth Barry appeared to collide with the Belgian striker. As a result, Everton were to play without their major target man for the remainder of the game. His domineering presence in the box was sorely missed, as Naismith simply did not offer the same threat going forward as Lukaku.

Liverpool: Disciplined Defense and Textbook Counterattack

After the display at Aston Villa, it appeared that Stevie G was in a state of limbo in terms of playing. He no longer has the legs of his 24 year old self, and is no longer able to run back and forth across the pitch as he has done for LFC in the past. With the absence of Lucas, Brendan Rodgers once again attempted to play Gerrard as the holding midfielder, a new position for the 33 year old captain. However, this match showcased tweaks in tactics that payed off handily. Below is a graph, borrowed from eplindex.com (Check them out, they’re fantastic analysts), which shows the movement of the team both on and off the ball.



Defensive movement is indicated by the yellow arrows, while blue indicates movement when in possession or attacking.

Defense

When the Toffees were on the ball, the outside backs bombed back to aid Skrtel and Toure in the back 4, which is standard for the position. However, Rodger’s tactical innovation can be seen in the defensive movements of Sterling and Henderson, who both dropped back to close any gap between the midfield and defense. Suarez generally drifted into the center of the park to pick up an outlet ball for breakaways and hold up play during the transition from defense to attack. The unhighlighted players, Coutinho and Sturridge took workhorse positions, pressing every single player nearby them to fight for possession. This had a chain-effect. Because of Sturridge and Coutinho’s pressing, Henderson and Sterling were given more freedom to position themselves in front of Gerrard to form a triangle. Pushing the two young midfielders into wider positions to mark Stones and Baines prevented the play to be switched as swiftly cross the park. It also allowed Cissokho and Flanagan to tuck into the middle to create a very solid back 4-line. Both Hendo and Sterling showed phenomenal tactical awareness, by not allowing themselves to be dragged to the center, which would have forced either Flano or Cissokho to drift out to Toffee wingers, in turn causing a disjointed back 4. Of course, this is all generally speaking, these pressing and wide roles change often in the match; Occasionally Sturridge would play higher up in Suarez’s position, Luis would press, or Coutinho would go wide and Sterling would press, etc. The main point is that these major tactical positions were filled at almost all moments, regardless of personalle, showing extreme tactical awareness by the Liverpool side. This style of play was suited, and perhaps even built around Gerrard’s position. The captain showed phenomenal lateral motion crossing back and forth across the pitch, and playing right in front of the center back pairing. If the Toffees found a way past the pressing of Sturridge/Coutinho, and the marking of Hendo/Sterling, Gerrard would step in with crucial tackles or important blocks. In the whole, Gerrard made 3 blocks, 3 tackles, and an interception to cut out a lot of danger before it even reached the back 4. His placement right in front of the defense also prevented Everton from floating balls in between the midfield and defense or finding any space in that area, the gap was practically non-existent.

Attack/Possession

There isn’t much to say about the possession play as there wasn’t really much of it. While Rodger’s side has often been praised for their fluid movement with the ball and the ability to set up diamonds and triangles to maintain possession, Liverpool showed a different style on the day. Perhaps Rodgers planned for this in order to accommodate for Martinez’s side who play in a similar vein. Regardless, after bending, but not breaking in defense Liverpool showcased lightning fast counter attacking play. Often, the formation switched to a 3-4-3 with Gerrard playing nearly a CB’s role in between the split pair of Skrtel and Toure. Liverpool had up to 7 players in attack during some of the faster breaks. With Stones and Baines being pushed forward to proved goal threats, a massive gap opened up in the back, particularly on the sides. In Sturridge’s first goal, Stones makes the mistake of pushing too far up (picture below).

By the time he realized that Everton had lost possession, it was too late. He had already given the lightning fast Liverpool frontman enough space to make a lethal run down the center of the pitch to receive Coutinho’s pinpoint through ball, and Jagielka simply didn’t have the pace to keep up. In this goal, only 2 Liverpool players were in the Everton half when the ball was thrown, and only 3 played a role in the actual creation of the goal. This sort of efficiency up front was seen again in the through ball that Coutinho sent to Sturridge later in the second half, although Sturridge went for the glory of completing his hattrick (after missing a penalty) rather than making the correct lay off to Suarez. The corner kick was simply down to poor marking in the box, allowing Gerrard to bullet in a header despite a man on the post. The other 2 goals conceded were due to lapses in concentration by Jagielka and Alcaraz, allowing a simple over the top ball from Kolo Toure from within his own half, as well as practically passing to Suarez and lacking the pace to catch up from the midfield mark. Liverpool played textbook counterattacking football which payed off handily. Very few sides can manage this type of constricting defensive and expanding offensive play so quickly, and those that can are often gifted with lethal attacking forces (Ronaldo and Bale for Madrid for example). This was the case with Liverpool’s Sturridge and Suarez partnership, which at the moment is looking unstoppable again. Keep in mind that before the match, this was an Everton side with the second fewest goals conceded in the Premier League.

Everton: Lukaku Sized Hole and Lack of Positive Possession



Everton didn’t do too much wrong at all in this matchup, the tactical play behind their game was solid. They dominated possession with a whopping 60% of the match on the ball. However, much of their individual errors caught up with them, and costed them dearly. The below graphic shows Everton’s defensive and attacking tactics during the match.

Attack

Most of the Toffees attacking play of the season centered around Romelu Lukaku’s domineering presence in the box. The graphic above shows a very straight-forward attacking strategy for the match. Barry and McCarthy would move forward as holding midfielders to provide a triangle with Ross Barkley in order to maintain possession going forward. They are also often very effective open-field tacklers who stop counter-attacks and regain possession for Everton. The outside backs, Baines and Stones were given instructions to bomb down the wings and provide crossing service for the physically dominant Lukaku in the box. This ultimately proved quite costly in Liverpool’s break aways; perhaps a safer strategy would have been for only one of the two to go forward at any moment. Barkley and Mirallas are more suited for fast, diagonal movement with the ball towards goal, and both have shown that they are not afraid of cracking shots from outside the 18. In fact, it was Barkley that had the first sight of goal in the match as his left footed drive from about 25 yards out saw the ball just go over the crossbar by about a foot. It’s to be noted that Mirallas’ movement cutting in diagonally without the ball also drags a defender back, opening space for either the big Belgian striker to receive the ball on the edge of the penalty area. or for Stones to creep into the corner from his RB position. This is often when Barkley and or Pienaar make moves to the farpost for an aerial ball, while the other drops back to give an option of a lay off shot or to reset play. However, this game plan was set to a screeching halt by Lukaku’s injury. Without Lukaku providing the threat at goal, Everton were left flailing for alternatives to get chances at goal. Martinez’s men attempted to keep possession until an opening presented itself, but no clear opportunity was given up by the disciplined Liverpool defense. Overall, their possession play lacked the final part, without which there were very few meaningful moments of possession. They managed a good number of shots, but couldn’t find a killer blow.

Defense

Everton weren’t on defense for much of the game, but every time they were, they looked like conceding. Distin and Oviedo’s experience in the back were sorely missed as SAS tore apart the back 4 in most of the breakaways they were given. Due to Baines and Stones pushing up so far in attack, those gaps in the back were exploited handily by the pace of Sterling and Sturridge. Suarez also did well to hold off tackles from Barry and McCarthy while the transition to attack was occurring. Part of Everton’s woes also lie in the gap between the midfield and defense. While the back 4 were slow to track back when Liverpool were attacking, the holding midfield pairing of McCarthy and Barry didn’t make the job any easier. As the back line dropped into their own half, a gap was exposed for players such as Coutinho and Henderson to dribble into, or for Suarez to drop into to collect the ball. This bit of space was enough to send Liverpool on a wolf-pack like attack. As shown by LFC’s attacking arrows, their strategy lay in overloading the Everton back line with fast group attacks, cordoned off into smaller triangles on either side, and Suarez in the middle. Eventually, the Toffees loss came down to lapses in judgement such as Stones pushing forward, Jagielka passing to Suarez, and Alcaraz/Jagielka not picking up Sturridge’s run on Kolo’s lob forward. These are mistakes were uncharacteristic for Everton, whose back line have been iron-tight the rest of the season, and simply could not have come at a worse time against attacking threats such as Suarez and Sturridge.

Conclusion

Liverpool played phenomenally and Brendan Rodgers deserves a lot of praise for the way he lined up his tactics against a strong Everton side. He built off of the failures against Aston Villa and modified the midfield to give Gerrard the best chance he could have in holding down the fort. Martinez’s men did well to try and adapt to Lukaku’s absence, but lacked the killer instinct to score against a disciplined defensive display by the Redmen. On the flip side, Liverpool were absolutely lethal with their chances and the Toffees made poor lapses in judgement which cost them dearly. Overall, the scoreline may have easily been a rout of 5+ goals with the errors Everton were making and the speedy counterattacks of Liverpool. The entire Liverpool team deserves credit for phenomenal defensive play, while Sturridge and Suarez once again propel the Reds to 3 points with clinical finishing. Everton’s Jagielka, Stones, and Alcaraz are to blame for poor errors that cost them dearly. Regardless, it was a night to remember in Anfield, where Liverpool continue to remain undefeated against Everton for nearly 15 years.