“Tonight was the least compact performance I’ve seen from us in a long, long time, and other teams as well. We had for 60 minutes not one counter-pressing situation, we were far away from everything and wide in possession.”
These words were part of Jurgen Klopp’s explanation for Liverpool’s crushing 4-1 defeat in Naples earlier this month. More headlines were generated by his comment that his side “have to kind of reinvent ourselves” and while that hasn’t yet truly occurred, there has been an interesting shift in one key aspect of how the Reds play.
Liverpool’s pressure success rate against Napoli was 26.8 per cent ( per FBRef ), their lowest of the season so far. If they provided a breakdown for the first hour of the match, it would almost certainly be lower for that period alone. The data for the Premier League campaign is looking better than ever before though.
