Klopp's Liverpool Style Guide to Winning Games

[Irishnev]

all the signings leading up the last season look excellent. its only immobile and ramos on that list who you would say were complete ****. Even then immobile came with a very good record.

Kampl has since been sold on also, Leverkusen I think. The others are regulars under Tuchel now and doing well.

[Corndog]

The thing is when we clicked (13/14) we didnt play "death by football" we played high pressing counter-attacking football so in esence it wasnt reall Rodgers football

Klopp likes to press high up the pitch and with great intensity and turn play quickly and counter-attack BUT hes also not scared to dig in and defend well and go front to back quickly on the counter

I think we have the plays to press high up the pitch (not sure we can turn play that quickly though) but I dont think we have the players to sit deep defend and go front to back quickly we lack a good defence to do that and also we dont have a great deal of pace in the side either

Exactly right. In fact, whilst the formation was technically different from the one klopp normally uses it looked a lot like Dortmund. Stevie G dropping back with the CBs and the fullbacks pushing on.

[Fredo]

Does his teams build from the back?

[SB]

Does his teams build from the back?

Yeah but quickly from what I've seen. No 10 touches across the back 5 as the midfielders need to get into a position to receive the ball quickly. He's not afraid to go direct using pace up front either with a long ball from defence. You need variety & make the opposition think. We've become so predictable that teams are happy to press us & put us under pressure.

[marcus50bucks]

Pinched from another site. The poster makes a very good point. I'm intrigued to see how Klopp deals with this especially with no winter break. It really is a shame the players weren't able to work with him in pre-season.

Something I was looking at was the average distance ran per 90mins last season for some players in our team. First, a few Dortmund players to use comparatively.

Sven Bender averages 13.5km ran per 90.
Kagawa and Grosskreutz average about 12.5km ran per 90.
Lewandowski averaged 11.1km per 90 in the CL for Dortmund.

Comparitively, only Lallana and Allen average above 11km per 90 for us last season. Henderson, Lucas, Markovic and Coutinho all average appx 10.5km per 90. Important thing to note though is that Lallana rarely ever played a full 90 minutes. It appears he would run until his performance level would start dropping and then fresh legs would be brought on for him. Likewise Joe Allen, how much are his numbers boosted by his large number of sun appearances. Unfortunately I have no data for Benteke or Sturridge but I imagine they would both be somewhere below the 10km mark (Sterling is at 9.5km for example)

Balotelli averaged 8.7km per 90 minutes. The lowest of all outfield players last season. [IMG]

So it seems most if not all our squad will need to run abour 20-30% more under Klopp. Given that out fitness program is already in place, would Klopp really want to change it now. If not, how would that impact on our players being able to give what is asked of them on the pitch? And if they aren´t physically capable of running 20-30% more, and without a winter break, what does that mean for Klopp tactically for the remainder of this season?

EDIT:- Details of LFC distance per 90 data for anybody interested.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo....st-player.html

[Vermilion]

Balotelli averaged 8.7km a game. Wondered why the ground staff always worked hard to repair that square meter of the pitch, must have been well worn.

[Daffy Duck]

Kampl has since been sold on also, Leverkusen I think. The others are regulars under Tuchel now and doing well.

Yes, although it was a smart move by BVB at the time, and he's been great for Leverkusen ever since the transfer. Roger Schmidt also managed him at Salzburg and he knows how to utilize him properly, people at Dortmund didn't seem to know how to do that.

[Irishnev]

Yes, although it was a smart move by BVB at the time, and he's been great for Leverkusen ever since the transfer. Roger Schmidt also managed him at Salzburg and he knows how to utilize him properly, people at Dortmund didn't seem to know how to do that.

Schmidt is certainly going to go on to bigger and better things, Leverkusen going well under him. They have some excellent young players also.

[el matador]

Balotelli averaged 8.7km a game. Wondered why the ground staff always worked hard to repair that square meter of the pitch, must have been well worn.

Let me put that into some context for you all. In my last 7 a side game about 3 months ago I covered 7.2k in 1 hour 27 mins according to my Fitbit.

A 39 year old with 2 torn Achilles.

No wonder he was fat when he left here the lazy ****.

[el matador]

this is about pressing and counter pressing and the differences

pressing

normal pressing ie not gegen or counterpressing can be either a blanket press where teams press the opposition all over the park or press to special triggers

blanket / full coverage pressing which is practiced by diego simeone and marcelo bielsa is done from the first whistle to the last. every or as many players in possession of the ball are pressed non stop whether theyre in defence or attack. atletico madrid are relentless pressers of the ball.

pressing to certain triggers such as is done by most teams

- when a certain usually poor player gets the ball
- when the ball enters a certain zone
- when theres a bad first touch
- player not fully concentrated

etc... so everyone doesnt run around like mad pressing the teams all the time.

counter / gegen pressing

basically means countering the oppositions counter. as soon as you lose the ball the opposition are beginning to mount their own attacks - ie fullbacks start to push on immediately, wingers start to advance and the whole team starts to expand positionally going from a defensive organisation to offensive shape. according to the jurgen klopp this is when they are most vulnerable. just as a team is about to launch a counter attack from its own defence its at its most vulnerable because theyve gone from being compact to opening up their positions in readiness to attack. the gaps that were previously closed are now open and vulnerable for 5/6 sedonds.

countering this moment of expansion is counter / gegen pressing. its different to normal pressing but critical to klopp. i think we will see a fair of this at our club.

[redmike65]

The brain of Jonathan Wilson writes

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/oct/16/jurgen-klopp-liverpool-gegenpressing-borussia-dortmund

this caught my eye

What that suggests is that the top clubs, at least, are getting better at countering the counter, that the transition from attack to defence has become as significant as the transition from defence to attack, and part of the reason for that is gegenpressing.

Presumably at its apex two sides will dispossess the other every few seconds for the entire game and we'll have "gegenpresception"

[el matador]

The brain of Jonathan Wilson writes

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/oct/16/jurgen-klopp-liverpool-gegenpressing-borussia-dortmund

this caught my eye



Presumably at its apex two sides will dispossess the other every few seconds for the entire game and we'll have "gegenpresception"

the difference is that the guy who invented it manages us. the rest are just pretenders.

[redmike65]

Michael Cox on the Spurs game

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/oct/18/jurgen-klopp-liverpool-tottenham-hotspur-new-manager-premier-league-tactics#comment-61665281

Yesterday was a so called Christmas tree 4-3-2-1 to shore up the defence, when the forwards are all fit the best way to utilise them while adding some creativity to middle (Can, Milner and Lucas are all destroyers really) is to drop Coutinho back a bit. Could two central midfielders do the job of shielding this centre defence?

----------Mignolet
Clyne--Skrtel--Sakho--Moreno
-------Milner---Lucas
----------Coutinho
--------<------Firmino---> floating
-----Strurridge-Benteke

Analysis from German Klopp observer.

http://spielverlagerung.com/2015/10/17/tottenham-liverpool-00-klopps-premier-league-debut/

[Hemingway]

What would worry me about that shape isn't a lack of protection but a lack of natural width. The Christmas tree worked because Milner and Can both pressed in wide areas and Lallana/Coutinho did the same higher up the pitch. Milner basically played as a right wing - it was a very Henderson-like 1.5 positions thing. Can was pretty much the same on the left, just less dramatically.

With that shape, presumably Milner and Coutinho would be the ones pressing in wide areas in midfield. That's asking a lot of Coutinho - he's a hard worker, but he doesn't have Can's engine. One of the strikers would probably need to pull wide and press the fullbacks higher up, too, and neither are harriers in the first place. Another option would be Coutinho and Firmino wide in a 442/4222 type of shape, which is probably the more natural way to get all of those players in the same side. But I think there's a good chance Klopp decides the team functions better with one striker and just picks whoever's in form (or more probably whoever's healthy).

The creativity's going to pick up anyway as we settle down and get used to the patterns (and as we play lesser opposition and aren't forced into playing Origi up top). Can and Milner may not have magic in them, but it's harsh to call them destroyers - Milner in particular was always plenty creative at City. More importantly, they help get the pressing right and that's going to lead to a lot of chances itself.

[Assassin]

What would worry me about that shape isn't a lack of protection but a lack of natural width. The Christmas tree worked because Milner and Can both pressed in wide areas and Lallana/Coutinho did the same higher up the pitch. Milner basically played as a right wing - it was a very Henderson-like 1.5 positions thing. Can was pretty much the same on the left, just less dramatically.

With that shape, presumably Milner and Coutinho would be the ones pressing in wide areas in midfield. That's asking a lot of Coutinho - he's a hard worker, but he doesn't have Can's engine. One of the strikers would probably need to pull wide and press the fullbacks higher up, too, and neither are harriers in the first place. Another option would be Coutinho and Firmino wide in a 442/4222 type of shape, which is probably the more natural way to get all of those players in the same side. But I think there's a good chance Klopp decides the team functions better with one striker and just picks whoever's in form (or more probably whoever's healthy).

The creativity's going to pick up anyway as we settle down and get used to the patterns (and as we play lesser opposition and aren't forced into playing Origi up top). Can and Milner may not have magic in them, but it's harsh to call them destroyers - Milner in particular was always plenty creative at City. More importantly, they help get the pressing right and that's going to lead to a lot of chances itself.

Lack of width??? Most of the spuds game was played down both touchlines...