Boring, boring Arsenal? No – that’s Liverpool’s role now | OneFootball

It may be a role reversal, in more ways than one. Last season, Liverpool were the champions, Arsenal the team that finished with a double-digit deficit to them. Now the champions-elect boast a 14-point advantage over their rivals, which could become 17 this evening. In August, when they last met, Mikel Arteta was accused of being overly cautious in his side’s 1-0 defeat.

Boring, boring Arsenal, to borrow the chant from the 1990s? It is harder to make that case when they have found the net in each of their subsequent 26 matches, have been outscored only by Manchester City in the Premier League and average almost three goals per game in the Champions League.

Now the accusation is a twist on a theme. Boring, boring Liverpool? “I find it really hard to hear, but it's not that I would not completely disagree, I would use different words and I would take certain things into account,” said Arne Slot. “I want to win as many trophies as I can, but I think I am also known for the fact that my teams always try to play attacking football and can only say they're trying to do so.”

If this has been the season when Slot’s plans have malfunctioned, Liverpool’s recent travails are an example. They laboured to a 0-0 draw at Anfield against Leeds last week. There was a dullness to their first-half display in Sunday’s draw at Fulham. Like much else at Anfield, the problems can be traced back to their summer transfer business.

The day after beating Arsenal, they signed Alexander Isak. It seemed they would play fantasy football, with an unstoppable attacking collective. Yet it is the second half of the campaign and Isak and Florian Wirtz each have only two league goals and one assist.

But if Slot had seemed to assemble a “Fab Four”, they may go to Arsenal with only Wirtz: Isak is injured, Hugo Ekitike a doubt and Mohamed Salah away at the African Cup of Nations. The quartet have not begun a game together, though there never seemed a formula to play all four. Meanwhile, Liverpool, who scored 86 league goals last season, are only on course for 61 now.

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Florian Wirtz could be the only member of the ‘Fab Four’ available against Arsenal (Getty)

Injuries are part of the explanation, but only part of it. Slot’s laments about encountering low blocks and scoring too few goals, while conceding too many, from set pieces are far too familiar for many of a Liverpool persuasion.

“We are struggling to create a lot of chances,” he admitted. “But if I am known for one thing, then it is attacking football, playing a lot of attackers and bringing a lot of attackers in when we are a goal down. So I find it hard to hear that we play boring football, let alone that I am not playing attackers.”

And, indeed, he was criticised earlier in the campaign for overloading with forwards in bold substitutions. Now there is a different shape to his side. After nine defeats in 12 games, an unbeaten run of nine has seemed to come with a greater emphasis on solidity. Slot’s starting 11 at the Emirates Stadium is almost certain to feature four central midfielders by trade, in Ryan Gravenberch, Curtis Jones, Alexis Mac Allister and Dominik Szoboszlai, however they are arranged.

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Alexander Isak is now injured having scored just two goals for the Reds (PA Wire)

“Packing the team with midfielders is not something I am doing by choice,” said Slot. “I am doing it because certain players are not available, and that is something that needs to be really clear because I am a manager for six or seven years and I have always played with wingers and I have always changed my wingers with new wingers coming in. So I always have it 4-3-3 with real wingers.”

That has tended to be the Dutch way. And yet, the 4-1 defeat to PSV Eindhoven was the cue for him to drop Salah and play midfielder Szoboszlai on the right.

"I agree that [steadying the ship] was the first thing that needed to happen, but I didn't do that to try and play defensive football,” Slot said. “I think that is the misconception. We always press the other team as high as we can up the pitch, all over the pitch. And when we have the ball, we try to create as many chances as we can.”

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Slot has opted for a more pragmatic Liverpool in recent weeks (Getty)

The statistics showed that, after 20 games, six teams had created more big chances, even if only two had attempted more shots. And yet, of late, Liverpool have been less than exhilarating. One issue may be that, while Slot talks of his love of wingers, Salah and Cody Gakpo’s preference is to come infield and shoot, while he may have expected more dangerous crosses from Milos Kerkez at left-back. Yet it is hard to escape the sense that much of the plan revolved around Wirtz’s extreme creativity and Isak’s finishing in packed penalty boxes.

And, not for the first time, Slot complained he encountered defensive opponents. Fulham, he noted, played five at the back against Liverpool on Sunday. “I did not change our style but teams have changed their style against us,” he said. “Our style is not [to] steady the ship, go back and defend your own box for 90 minutes. My football is Liverpool v Paris Saint-Germain. That is how I would love to have every single game, but you need to have two teams to have an open game of football.”

But if Arteta may be more the pragmatist and Slot the purist, now the questions about the style of football surround Liverpool. And if Slot has the answers off the pitch, does he have them on it?