Phil Thompson urges Arne Slot to emulate former LFC manager with suggested tactical change tonight | OneFootball

Phil Thompson has made the case for Arne Slot to consider a change in formation for Liverpool’s Champions League fixture away to Inter Milan tonight.

The Reds have been dogged by ongoing defensive problems this season, with a depressing tally of 38 goals conceded in all competitions, with 14 of those being shipped in our last six matches (a run which includes one clean sheet).

The Premier League champions had seemed in firm control when leading 2-0 with 20 minutes remaining against Leeds on Saturday, only for a crazy foul by Ibrahima Konate to give away a penalty and trigger a late collapse which saw the game end 3-3.

Thompson advises Slot to play a back three tonight

Speaking on The Official Liverpool FC Podcast, Thompson called for Slot to consider playing three centre-backs against Inter to help stem the tide of goals against the Reds, echoing a tactical change that the late Gerard Houllier made when he was the Frenchman’s assistant at Anfield.

The 1981 European Cup-winning captain said: “It’s three games [unbeaten], small steps, [but] too many goals have been conceded. That’s the big thing and we’ve got to start [defending better].

“I don’t know if we have come to the point where we’ve seriously got to think about playing three at the back, five at the back – Konate, [Joe] Gomez and Virgil van Dijk – to play in there and have wing-backs.

“When I was in charge with Gerard Houllier and we were leaking loads of goals, after about a month or so we’ve gone: ‘We’re leaking goals; let’s go to a back three, a back five, just to give us some solidity’. We might be coming to that point in our defence of what we need.”

Thompson’s logic is sound, but we don’t see it being implemented

We can see the logic in Thompson’s suggestion, given Liverpool’s defensive issues in recent weeks and months, and Inter have the firepower to administer some serious punishment on the Reds if we’re not on top of our game tonight.

Lautaro Martinez, Marcus Thuram and Hakan Calhanoglu have 26 goals between them in all competitions this term (FBref), with the Argentine attacker netting four times in as many Champions League matches in the current campaign (Transfermarkt).

However, with Slot only having three fit senior centre-backs in Konate, Gomez and Van Dijk, he’s unlikely to risk starting all of them for fear that one would get injured and leave us even more threadbare in that part of the squad than we already are.

Academy gem Wellity Lucky has been included in Liverpool’s travelling party for this game, having trained with the first team yesterday, but throwing an untested teenager into the San Siro bear pit would be an enormous gamble by the head coach, no matter how talented he might be.

As sensible as Thompson’s idea seems, we don’t expect to see it implemented against Inter, so the burden is set to be on whichever two centre-backs start (and indeed on the team as a whole) to be defensively sound and not grant the Nerazzurri the sort of charity they don’t need to be able to punish us.

You can watch Slot’s full pre-Inter Milan press conference below, via Empire of the Kop on YouTube: