daredevil We finished ahead of them in the last two season and very well would have done the same this season had we not suffered so many injuries and refereeing decisions. It happens.

You can't have it that we are behind them because of injuries but claim we were ahead of them based on tactics when they were hurt just as badly with injuries those years.

Anyway why are people talking about Liverpool over a multi year period anyway? Slot has just joined this year, their tactics the previous couple of seasons don't really matter.

Liverpool under Slott doesn't play all too different from us.
Both teams:

• invert their full backs. Average positions that the full backs play for both teams are roughly the same (unlike Citeh, who have a maniacally high line which no one seems to point out). Robertson is their go-to inverted full back.
• have CB good on the ball.
• Use CMs to progress play from the middle third to the opposition by either carrying a short distance or finding line-breaking passes.
• prioritise retaining posession.
• Play with fairly high lines.
• Love to play crosses to the far post (though we've done this less nowadays which is part of our problem).

Tactically maybe the only real difference is that they have a tendency to pack the midfield, doing a 2-3-2-3 Instead of our 3-2-2-3 in the buildup though both end up with a 2-3-5 in attack. We end up having the same weaknesses too.

The biggest difference right now for us is being clinical in attack and our attacking intensity. They take waaaay more shots from open play, we tend to fiddle faddle. OTOH we are definitely better at set pieces.

Claudius

Soon to be three…

daredevil It's the exact same side playing how they've always played. Slot hasn't made any drastic changes aside from fine tuning them.

this just isn't true, any Liverpool fan will tell you this.

RocktheCasbah Things may not be brilliant, as Qwiss said yesterday, but they're far from bad.

This is true. However we are football fans and if you are not winning everything all the time the natural inclination is to try and think about ways we can improve. I don't think we need to be more like Liverpool, I do think we need more in attack and to let the proverbial handbrake a bit more often but as I've said the last few days only a little. We don't need a major shift in philosophy, just nudge. Just throw a tiny bit more caution to the wind. Like when Ode was out Nwaneri should have started a few. Even like this Palace game, Havertz in midfield has his own flaws but the sight of 2 attacking mids ahead of Partey was a very welcome sight. I think had we done the same against Everton we'd have won that too and the vibes here right now would be a lot more rosey.

I don't think Liverpool are all that amazing at all. And I don't even think they are better than us. I think its impressive that Slots come in and got them slightly improve rather than go backwards as I thought they might but I also think they've had everything go their way so far this season until very recently. And I think with Konate being their first major bit of bad luck this season its shown how fragile their form actually is. Their draws with Fulham and Newcastle were an opportunity we failed to capitalise on but they did slip up. Even in this games vs Spurs they conceded 3 goals. that 8 goals conceded in 3 games. You wont see us doing to that. Eventually that sort of weakness at the back catches you out. The only question is whether we can capitalise when it does, so far the answers been no. Until the Everton game I was pretty confident we'd catch them and even yesterday I still felt we might but without Saka I really think we need a Dubai style shift in form to do it.

Claudius

"physically better than the invincibles" no offence Claudius but what does this rot even mean? I kind of feel like I've snapped because I've been reading a lot of quackery in online sports discourse over the last few years.

Those Arsenal players were supreme athletes. Tall, fast, strong and skilful. Top footballers have been eking out max performance for 30+ years now and human physiology has not changed in that time. Footballers in the Invincibles era ran, on average, just as much as players do now. Check the statistics. In 2005, midfielders were averaging 10-12km per game, pretty much identical to what midfielders are averaging now.

I've seen people mention advances in """"sports medicine"""" as the reason the best footballers are now, apparently, physically superior to the best ones from 20 years ago. It's nonsense. There is no beetroot juice, badger stem cell therapy, eye of newt, watermelon tarts, multivitamins, grandma's potion that can improve the physicality of an already supremely honed athlete by 10 - 20%.

The scientifically proven advances in sports science have come in areas like data capture, injury diagnosis, recovery and... doping.

This isn't proving your point. In that study, footballers are not covering more distance, but between 2010 and 2012, had different locomotive patterns (more sprints but more periods of very slow play brought on by fatigue).

The study is limited anyway because it analysed almost 500 players simultaneously. Another focusing on the country's top four/six teams would've been useful to see if the change was as obvious among the cream. My guess is 'no'. The cream of the athletic crop - whether in 2000, 2020 or 2040, are built different and will squeeze out every last bit of performance humanly possible.

We have data for the distance covered by high level players back in 2005 and data for distance covered by high level players today. There is no startling difference.

Watch Liverpools counter attacks this season , the key is numbers getting forward from deep positions with a lot of space between those runners , two are always wider , stretching the defensive width and creating space . We on the other hand are breaking much closer together or only have two players running into danger areas so all the defense we are up against cluster on the area we pass the ball to initially . So we have to stop or slow the momentum and that kills the counter