Arne Slot Under Rafa Benitez's Blanket
It's quite an image, isn't it?
Arne Slot had to act. He had to. Liverpool conceded 10 goals in three matches, scoring just once in return. Like his immediate employment prospects, the Reds needed to swiftly change for the better.
Out went Mohamed Salah, relegated to the substitutes bench. Thank goodness the Egyptian held a post-match press conference to highlight this else you might not have realised.
In came a harder working right flank. Dominik Szoboszlai took Salah’s spot with Joe Gomez starting behind him. Liverpool conceded 1.25 expected goals per game in league and Europe when Salah started this season; they have averaged 0.68 in the four matches since.
Those figures drop to 1.09 and 0.47 without penalties respectively. The first is decent, the latter truly elite. The improvement appears to have been achieved by Slot shifting his bedding in line with Rafa Benitez’s theory of the short blanket.
The challenge for any manager is to strike a workable balance between attack and defence. As Rafa once put it, “if you cover your head, you have your feet cold, but if you cover your feet, you have your head cold.” Do you pull the blanket up to protect the head that is your own goal or drag it down to keep your feet warm at the other end of the pitch?
(And if so, why did Benitez sign Peter Crouch? He was big, he was red and his feet stuck out the bed. Makes you think, doesn’t it?)
Liverpool’s games have certainly changed in the No Salah era. Little of note occurred in any of the first halves, with Slot seemingly confident his charges could get the job done after the break. The passivity in the opening 45 minutes against Sunderland went too far, but that’s the issue of balance rising up again.
The Reds ultimately came within a 96th minute Leeds goal of three wins and a draw from four matches, three of which were on the road. As frustrating as Ao Tanaka’s equaliser was, there’s a foundation building for an assault on the second half of 2025/26. It’s valuable to evaluate what has changed to see if it can be maintained.
Assessing the data for this period is tricky. Liverpool have allowed a total of 39 touches in their penalty box across their previous three league games. As this is only seven more than occurred in 90 minutes at Selhurst Park and eight more than at Brentford, this seems immediately positive. Even 10-man Newcastle had 27.
Pulling up the Opta rankings for the Premier League (plus Liverpool’s Champions League opponents) shows the last three domestic games were against three of the five weakest teams though. If the Reds failed to post decent numbers in this run then they were never likely to again.
As much as results must’ve forced Slot’s hand tactically, there would’ve been few better times to make his move. Getting a new system in place in easier matches should embed it ahead of tougher challenges. Early evidence suggests it has worked, with Inter producing their joint-eighth lowest non-penalty xG in their last 196 home matches (in the FBRef database) on Tuesday.
Far less occurred in the last four matches than those that went before, the chaotic second half at Elland Road aside. Yet the non-penalty xG difference hasn’t changed for the better much, if at all. The previous four games have all been worse on this front than the loss to Manchester United, for instance.
However, rather than it being purely about what is happening at either end, the greater factor is that less is happening. Liverpool have had two matches this season in which they led the expected goals by approximately 0.95: a 2-1 defeat to Chelsea and a 2-0 win at West Ham.
The difference between these games was that the xG score was 1.94-1.00 at Stamford Bridge, 1.25-0.30 on the east side of London. The expected goal value of Estêvão’s winner alone topped West Ham’s entire output. Putting the individual shot figures in to a simulator shows that the Reds (Team A) had a 61.6 per cent chance of winning at Chelsea:
They had a slightly better chance of winning against the Hammers though. The likelihood of them losing more than halved despite the expected goal difference being essentially identical.
Let’s ignore penalties here. Liverpool have played nine league or European matches this season in which the total expected goals for both sides was under two. Their record? Seven wins, one draw and a defeat at Manchester City.
This leaves 12 other matches, only four of which were won. While this includes a trio of Champions League victories, it seems clear that the Reds need low event games in order to thrive this season.
A clear pattern has emerged. Whether it’s truly causation is another thing, but when the blanket is pulled up, Liverpool do well. What that means for Salah remains to be seen. He could be frozen out in more ways than one, exposed by the bedding covering the back end of the team.
Keep your head warm, Arne. Your bald noggin must get cold at this time of year.
Thanks Andrew. This data & the results support the idea of fixing defensive stability first. They also show that things have been simultaneously improving & unlucky since the Villa match at the start of November (10 np goals conceded from 4.6 np xG in the league). Fixing the defense (even at the expense of attack) should enable us to deliver the 2.1 ppg needed to safely qualify for UCL. It also builds confidence when results improve & the time to improve the attack.
There's been a lot of surprising noise in the past few weeks from supporters who are normally level-headed about replacing the manager (especially now that Alonso is in hot water). I get the frustration but we aren't Chelsea or some Championship side that thinks switching the manager solves everything!
Surely, we see the progress with huge wins (vs Villa, Madrid, Inter) accompanied by smart performances. Surely, we see the wisdom of Arne's short-term tactical changes to stop the bleeding. Can we not empathize with all of the issues he's been handed? (Diogo RIP, not signing Guehi earlier in the window, Alex's fitness, defender injuries, dips in veterans' form, integration of many new players).
Forget the title defense and the team we aspire to be. Support the team where they are at right now and its manager!
I always figured that Rafa had picked up Crouchie because he seemed like an ideal target man precisely because "He's big! He's Red!", etc. and that kind of offensive approach worked fairly seamlessly with Rafa's defense-first mentality. Memory is kinda fading, though. In terms of tactical differences, I remember complaining earlier in the season that offensive initiation by the back line- specifically Virg's long diagonals to the right -had basically disappeared, as we were content to build through the midfield. Then we see yesterday as Virg launched no less than four of those in just the first half. A return to what worked for us for the 7 years prior? Although, why we would start doing that again when the primary target for those VVD deliveries has been left behind in Kirkby just raises other questions. And, as you note, the defensive improvement has been marked, while the offensive game plan is still in absentia, not least because the Most Expensive Player in English Football History still hasn't done much to speak of. And our second-most expensive player still hasn't quite fit in. And the guy who was supposed to play on that right side as an approximation of a replacement for Mo has barely played. And... Yeah. Again, you would hope this would be the final nail in the coffin of that section of our supporters who have insisted since FSG arrived that their not spending money is what's holding us back, but that's probably being way too optimistic.