“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.
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Statsbomb define a successful pressure as when the defending team regains possession within five seconds of applying their press. Across the six seasons for which the data is available, the Reds have had few equals across Europe’s top five leagues.
The only four teams in England, France, Germany, Italy or Spain with higher pressure success rates across this period all hail from Klopp’s homeland. Bayern Munich (34.3 per cent) top the standings, ahead of RB Leipzig (32.7), Bayer Leverkusen (32.6) and Dortmund (32.0), with Liverpool (31.6) next in line.
On a game-by-game basis, only in the 0-0 draw with Everton have the Reds been below their long-term average in the Premier League in 2022/23. Their pressing success rate for the campaign is 39.1 per cent, the highest among all 98 teams in the big leagues this season.
What’s more, Liverpool’s only run of six matches with a higher figure was the preceding one, which covered the 3-1 win against Wolves in May and the first five games of this campaign. There are 191 batches of six games for which data is available, so it’s impressive work to currently be at the pinnacle.
However, while the overall picture looks pretty, there are undoubtedly cracks in the artwork. In his book, “ Intensity: Inside Liverpool FC - Our Identity ”, Pep Lijnders notes the importance of being entirely committed. “You can be good for 98 per cent but missing two per cent and then your press will be shit,” he wrote, and while the overall figures look good, there have clearly been costly moments when poor pressing has cost the Reds this term.
The general location of the pressures has shifted too. Only Napoli have made more in the final third than Liverpool since the summer of 2017, and by just one every four games. Only Manchester City, Eibar and Bayern have made a higher proportion of their total pressures in that zone over the last five years too.
Yet having averaged somewhere between 45 and 47 attacking third pressures per game for each of the last four campaigns, the Reds’ figure stands at 33 for 2022/23, a drop of roughly a quarter. Some of this may be explained by the fact they have often been chasing results and therefore dominating possession. Teams often sit deep against Liverpool anyway, and ( aside from Bournemouth ) them having a point or three to protect going into injury time has only accentuated that from opponents this season.
But where Klopp’s side averaged a pressure for every 4.8 touches their opponents had in their own defensive third across the previous five campaigns, they have allowed 6.1 touches per press in 2022/23. This will be part of why the total figures look so strong, as the Reds have not been as intense in the final third where it is hardest to win the ball.
Klopp has uttered many profound soundbites during his time in England, perhaps most famously declaring that “no playmaker in the world can be as good as a good counter-pressing situation.” Liverpool’s press appears to be broadly working, just not in the areas of the field in which it once did. Resolving this may be the minor reinvention they need.
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