There was more good news for Liverpool fans this week as it was announced Jurgen Klopp had signed a two-year extension to his current deal at Anfield. The popular German will now remain at Anfield until at least 2026, setting up the Premier League's longest-serving manager for a potential decade-long tenure at the club.
It’s fair to say that Klopp’s had a transformational impact at Liverpool during his six-and-a-half years at the club and could yet finish this campaign having secured a historic quadruple.
But while Klopp is the chief commander of the Liverpool juggernaut, there are key men around him who also play crucial roles in the club’s success. One of those is the highly regarded Pepijn Lijnders, Klopp’s assistant, who committed his future to the club this week by also signing a further two-year extension.
There was a fear that the Dutchman, who returned to Liverpool in 2018 after a short stint in charge of Dutch side NEC, may have left at the end of his current deal in 2024 after stating last year his ‘plan’ was to go back into management.
“That’s the plan (to go back into management). Jurgen knows this. I have a contract to 2024 and when the time comes I will sit down with my management and see the options I have. We are in the middle of this project, this beautiful project, and after that, I will decide. But definitely, that’s the plan.”
His decision to stay is great news for Liverpool, and fans this week were given a rare opportunity to watch and listen to Lijnders provide a fascinating insight into Liverpool’s tactics, philosophy and the story behind their historic 4-0 Champions League semi-final success against Barcelona three years ago.
One of the many captivating subjects covered by Lijnders as part of his appearance on The Coaches ‘ Voice was how Liverpool look to press their opponents without the ball.
Liverpool are renowned for being one the most aggressive pressing sides in Europe, with Lijnders famously coining the term ‘our identity is intensity’, and the 39-year-old went into detail about the structure Liverpool use to be so successful.
“If you talk about our defending, then you have to understand how we defend. We have an offensive pressing zone, where we press offensive things like a goal kick. We have our pressing zone, that’s the middle zone, and we have our defensive pressing zone.
“We have different principles for each zone, but the ideas are always the same, we want to win the ball.
“If you would divide our team, you would divide it into two blocks. The first block is the front three, and the second block is the block of seven, plus Ali (Alisson) of course, we can’t forget. But these seven, their job is always to close the centre and be ready to jump, be on the front foot.
“The front three, as Jurgen always says, are responsible to defend five, even six players (the opposition’s defence, keeper and sometimes deepest midfielder).
While there is structure to how Liverpool defends, Lijnders admitted that remaining unpredictable is a key staple of what they do. “With this mentality, we press, with this mentality we chase. If you see us it’s not ABC coaching we want to be unpredictable. A lot of it is about being close and being ready to go, we follow, with the help of the block of seven.
“When you divide the three pressing zones, our precedence is clear - compactness. A lot of time in training we will train in our pressing zone with a game, 11v11 or 10v10, in that zone where there has to be constant pressure applied. “
The rewards Liverpool reap as a result of the above are captured clearly in their underlying numbers this season.
They rank top in the Premier League in teams of making the highest number of defensive actions in the final third of the pitch (43.3 per 90), and also rank first in terms of having the lowest Passes Per Defensive Action (PPDA - 8.73) average.
PPDA is a metric that measures how many passes the opposition is allowed to make on average before defensive action is attempted by the team without the ball.
