A familiar complaint of Jurgen Klopp throughout his years at Liverpool is the lack of time to adequately prepare on the training pitches.
The demands placed on the Reds in the four competitions they enter every season whittles down the amount of days Klopp and his coaching staff have to work on team training either at Melwood or the AXA Centre in Kirkby.
Never was that more apparent than in the second half of last season when Liverpool ended up going all the way to the final of every cup competition to end their campaign with 63 games played.
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Between the victory over Watford on April 2 and the Champions League final loss to Real Madrid on May 28, the Reds played 16 times, which equates to a game every three-and-a-half days. Given the Liverpool squad are given the day off after each match and the build-up to the following fixture includes a team analysis meeting, there was precious little opportunity to effectively implement any technical alterations for the next gameplan.
This season has not been anywhere as demanding for the Reds. The unique nature of the mid-season World Cup afforded domestic clubs the luxury of a six-week lay-off, with Klopp's men taking the opportunity to visit Dubai for some warm-weather training in mid-December as a result.
Sources around the camp at the time spoke of the trip being used to iron out on-pitch details as opposed to the fitness-building jaunts usually associated with the summer months, when Klopp typically takes his charges to training bases in France's Evian region or Saalfelden, in Austria.
Having only had three weeks off - a period where they were asked to stick to individually-tailored regimes - there was little need to build up the players' base fitness levels further, so the idea to try and eradicate out the problems that had blighted the first half of the campaign was a sound one.
"For me it has certainly helped because we have been looking at videos from last season, and obviously it has helped," said Fabio Carvalho after the first of two friendlies in Dubai, against Lyon. "We want to get back to pressing how the team pressed last year, which was very useful in games, and we created a lot of chances from it.
"We haven’t quite been at the level pressing-wise this year, and it’s something we’ve been working on and will keep working on. Hopefully, we’ll be back to our best. We could have [pressed] more often and we just need to tidy up with little tweaks and together we can do it. Like it showed in the first minute [against Lyon], it paid off, and we’re going to keep working on that."
When the ECHO sat down with Andy Robertson for a chat at the club's DubaI hotel during the trip, the Scotland full-back also talked up how work on pressing had taken priority during the team meetings and training pitches routines.
Robertson said: "We've been working a lot on pressing, counter-pressing and choosing our moments because in games we've not done that enough at times and in some games, we've sort of half-pressed. That is the worst thing you can do because if you go into it and you're not 100% that's when teams can pick you off. We've done that in a few games this season.
"But then again, in other games we've been excellent at it. Manchester City, Ajax, Tottenham; we've been looking at all the good games where the pressing came from. We've been so good [generally] at sitting in our block, picking our moments and knowing when to press. And if we've lost the ball then we have reacted so quickly.
"I think that's what people would say if you were to ask Liverpool fans or fans of other clubs, you know, 'how do you describe Liverpool in the last five years?' I think the answers would be the press offensively, as it's been so good.
"At times it's not been good enough this season, so it's important we try and get that impulse back and get that part of our game to the maximum consistently. At times we've done it really well but it's about being able to make sure we're all pressing at the same time and on the same page and we can sit back when it's the right moment.
"That is where this week has been really beneficial. We've worked on it this week, we worked on it against Lyon and I am sure we will do the same against AC Milan and then we will be ready for the season to start again."
In the six games since the return of domestic action, though, Liverpool's press has been virtually non-existent. It's been far too easy for opposition teams to play around the Reds, leading to an overexposed and overworked defence constantly being under siege. Thirteen goals shipped in just a half-dozen games is a startling statistic.
Even back on domestic soil, it's difficult to assess what the team have been working on specifically in training when you see them in matches. And even when a tactical tweak appears an obvious one, it has been something that has fallen flat.
For example, it was clear that Thiago Alcantara was tasked with closing down Brighton's Moises Caicedo when he dropped deep to receive possession from either defenders or goalkeeper Robert Sanchez in that 3-0 loss on Saturday. The Liverpool midfielder couldn't get near his opposite number, though, and the ploy never came close to yielding results.
The Reds have not exactly been overburdened with the fixture list since the return, playing just three games this calendar year and only twice in the Premier League as we enter the middle of the month.
That has given Klopp and his staff the best part of full weeks to ready the team for games. However, little seems to change from fixture to fixture in what has been a chastening 2023. It's the first time since 1993 that Liverpool have lost their first two matches of a new year.
A key theme has been the drop-off in numbers in terms of individual battles across the pitch. As highlighted in an article by the ECHO last week, the Reds only won 35 of their 81 'duels' against Wolves in that 2-2 draw in the FA Cup. That's a win-rate that stands at just 43.2%, while the loss at the Amex Stadium on Saturday afternoon saw them post a figure of 44%. The opposition is outworking and outfighting Liverpool, which is an accusation you could rarely level at Klopp's team in the past, even on their off-days.
"The problems were the same as last week when we spoke about it," Klopp said in the aftermath of the defeat to Brighton. "We don’t win the key battles on the pitch at key challenges and we give the ball away too easily. It’s difficult to organise protection for losing balls that you should not lose. It’s fully my responsibility. I had an idea with a different formation and it didn’t work out. Sorry."
With the manager admitting that further additions to his squad this month would seem unlikely, it looks like Liverpool will have to conjure up the spark that has been absent pretty much all season with the players already within the ranks if they are to stand any chance of a top-four finish .
Given the evident inability to address the major problems through the time spent on the training pitches alone in recent months, however, it would appear that a change of strategic approach entirely is now needed from Klopp. What that actually looks like, though, is difficult to envision just now.
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