Liverpool will look to put a disappointing week behind them in Sunday’s clash against Crystal Palace. 

While the Arsenal match left a feeling of misfortune deep within many of our heads. That assessment is probably fair, whether it was from the embarrassing officiating or conceding the goal from a careless mistake. 

The performance against Fenerbache, however, concocted feelings of anger and frustration, something which you’d have definitely seen if you caught Si’s post match video after the fact.

The performances from the likes of Alisson and especially Szoboszlai were nothing short of awful. A mistake is forgivable, but a lack of effort and petulant attitudes certainly aren’t. 

Despite the current frustrations and hangups though, Palace’s poor form under a dead man walking in Pierre Sage should make this a decent fixture to restore parity with. 

To me at least, this feels more like a game that will come down to Liverpool’s performance compared to the Palace gameplan. Players like Mateta and Liverpool bogeyman Sarr being out should only amplify our status as favourites in this game. 

Let’s take a look at the tactics and keys to victory:

The Setup: 

This season, the South London side have usually set up in a 3-4-2-1 formation, with the three centre backs anchored by a midfield base containing the progressive Adam Wharton and versatile workhorse Daichi Kamada.

They will usually build from a 3-2 base, with the wing backs pushing high for width. As he was previously an attacking player for Frankfurt and later Lazio, Kamada also likes to get forward and make late entries into the box, creating a less common and more gung ho 3-1-6 shape in possession.

A visualisation of Palace’s buildup play, including the 3-2 base, player runs, and Wharton’s role as the primary distributor.

How Palace can look in their 3-1-6 shape this weekend.

There is a reason that this shape is less common than a 3-2-5 and even a 2-4-4 though. Committing up to seven players forward can leave you deficient both out wide and in the centre against counter attacks. When further factoring in Adam Wharton’s biggest weakness, his lack of pace, it becomes an area Liverpool could profit from. 

Hoffenheim were able to exploit this space for the opening goal. Players like Barcola and Ngumoha could relish running into this amount of space.

The Midfield Selection: 

From a Liverpool perspective, this game could be won or lost in the midfield selection, as the levels of balance and viability could shift hugely from just one personnel change. Without wanting to sound too reactionary, I think we simply have to go with Mac Allister, Nyoni and Wirtz. 

Szoboszlai was widely criticised in midweek and Si’s video underlined many of our frustrations! His attitude and lack of graft was inexcusable against a poor Fenerbache outfit. And even when looking beyond that, Nyoni is simply a better ball-player. 

Here we can see in action how much Szoboszlai’s defensive coverage was lacking. Nyoni also impressed again with his Thiago-like passes through the lines.

A Tweak In Playing From The Back:

Something I’d like to see immediately, in the Palace game and beyond, is a tweak in how we build out from the back. Alisson’s distribution has suffered a noticeable decline this season, leading to a goal for Arsenal, as well as near misses against the likes of Fulham and Brighton.

How can we solve this? Well, with Nyoni’s emergence, I think he could have a key role to play. At present, it’s simply too risky to ask Alisson to play these risky passes to try and beat a press. Using the Arsenal mistake as an example, I’ve hypothesised a new-look structure from goal kicks and back passes that could help to reduce these errors. 

Do you think this could work? I can see this shape utilising Nyoni and Jacquet’s strengths.

Accountability For Individual Errors:

In these back-to-back losses, we’ve seen individual errors and complacency from last season’s ill-fated run under Arne Slot creep back in. And in addition, as we saw with Mo Salah last season, we’re also seeing signs that fellow greats Alisson Becker and Virgil van Dijk maybe aren’t what they once were. 

Despite some signs of strength, like coming back to rescue points in games we would’ve definitely lost last season, there’s still a fragility and soft underbelly to this Liverpool side. We will have these moments in a transitional season like this one, but I’m hoping Andoni Iraola will be able to get a response out of some of the players, especially some leaders and senior pros. 

Here we can see some errors from Kerkez, Alisson, Jacquet and Van Dijk. In the second image, neither centre back jumped to challenge for the long throw, and we can see how late Alisson reacted.

Now that we’ve gotten through all the analytical stuff, how is this game going to go? I do back the boys to get the win here. I wasn’t intending on being overly negative, and this preview certainly isn’t a hit piece on players like Szoboszlai, Alisson and Kerkez, more an honest discussion on what we need to fix. 

I’m going to boldly back a clean sheet here, go for a 2-0 Liverpool win, with this XI starting the game: Alisson, Araujo, Jacquet, Van Dijk, Kerkez, Nyoni, Mac Allister, Wirtz, Barcola, Gakpo, Isak

As always, make sure to fill in your score and starting XI predictions, lads and lasses. YNWA!