Jack Hallows believes concerns over a slow start for Liverpool’s Roberto Firmino are premature, not least due to the new season being only two games old.
I’m not sure I’ll ever understand football fans.
The English domestic football season is only two games old for most teams – three for Community Shield participants Manchester City and Chelsea – yet some players are already feeling the full force of whinier parts of their fanbases.
For Liverpool, that player is – somewhat surprisingly – our bright smiling, kung-fu kicking no.9, Roberto Firmino.
Liverpool’s front three was superb last season, scoring a combined 91 goals between them and two thirds of the attacking trident have truly hit the ground running.
Mohamed Salah followed his opening day goal by winning a penalty and registering an assist against Crystal Palace, while Sadio Mané has already found the back of the net three times.
Firmino though, despite registering an assist for one of Mané’s goals on opening day, hasn’t managed to find the net himself yet.
Worrying for a striker? If we were talking after a run of 10 goalless games where he looked as if he couldn’t hit a barn door with a grenade launcher, sure!
After playing a total of 160 minutes? Give me a break.
As ever though, I’ll back my statements up with some actual evidence as to why Firmino’s ‘slow start’ is nothing to worry about.
Back to the false-nine
Firmino has been seen as a key player for Liverpool ever since around January of 2016 when Jürgen Klopp first started toying with the idea of fielding the Brazilian as a striker.
The former Hoffenheim man’s workrate combined with his penchant for flair, his eye for goal and an impressive creative streak that often goes under the radar have always made him the ideal forward for a Klopp system.
Despite this healthy combination of traits, Firmino was criticised in 2016/17 for simply not scoring enough goals. Sure, he was running a lot, making tackles, linking the play and creating space for others but the Brazilian himself only managed to find the net 11 times.
This was more down to operating as a ‘false nine’ than a lack of goal threat.
Where players who operate as a ‘false nine’ differ from your more run-of-the-mill, regulation striker, is that – to put it simply – they are often tasked with doing far more dirty work.
A false nine is generally found dropping deep to link up play with the wingers and interchanging numerous passes with midfield players to draw defenders out of line and break up an opposition’s defensive shape.
Firmino was also tasked with leading the press high up the field, looking to choke space from opposition defences and win the ball back up the pitch, springing through balls for Sadio Mané to chase.
It represented something more of a bonus then for Firmino to score a hatful of goals rather than being a guarantee.
Last season, Firmino answered his critics by scoring a career-best total of 27 goals in all competitions.
However, he did it by operating as much more of a regulation striker – especially following the departure of Philippe Coutinho – and while the instruction to press, tackle and hassle was still there, goals and assists took on even more importance for the Brazilian.
It was interesting then to see Firmino used in a deeper-lying position against West Ham on the opening day, reprising the role against Crystal Palace on Monday night.
Where Firmino appeared on paper as the ‘9’ in a 4-3-3, flanked by Mané and Salah, the two wingers in truth operated in the central areas of the pitch with even more regularity than they did last season while Firmino dropped in between the pair almost creating a loose diamond 4-4-2 shape.
The trio’s heat maps on WhoScored.com showcase this perfectly, Firmino evidently having patrolled the midfield area of the pitch with far more regularity, while Mané and Salah are stationed dead in between the opposition centre half and full back on their respective sides of the pitch.
A tactic aimed at allowing the pair to make in-from-out diagonal runs that are horrible for defenders to track.
In fact, of Firmino’s 47 touches of the ball against West Ham, only six were in the opposition area. Against Palace he had even less, only three of his 53 total touches coming in the Eagles’ penalty box.
Whether this is Klopp’s answer to not signing an attacking midfielder in the summer or simply a way of re-integrating Firmino into the starting XI without asking too much physical work of him is unclear of yet but it’s certainly an interesting point to note.
World Cup hangover
“World Cup hangover” is a term used frequently when describing a player who progressed fairly deep into the World Cup competition over the summer and doesn’t look to have fully recovered upon returning for pre-season.
Despite boasting one of the highest fitness levels and most robust systems of the entire Liverpool squad, it’s more than possible that Firmino is being plagued by exactly this.
The Brazilian only took three weeks off over the summer which, after a gruelling season in which he appeared 54 times in all competitions for Liverpool and clocked up 4188 minutes along the way, is less than ideal.
Given the number of miles that Firmino is expected to cover for Klopp’s men, the addition of an international tournament over the summer could potentially have well and truly thrown a spanner into the works for the striker’s preparations and for all we know, he’s still not yet back up to full fitness.
After all, he did only appear twice during the Reds’ entire pre-season campaign, playing 45 minutes against Napoli in Dublin and then appearing against Torino a week later.
For many of the players, that Torino fixture was their fourth, fifth or even seventh appearance over the summer with some of Klopp’s squad such as Fabinho, Naby Keïta and Daniel Sturridge having reported to pre-season training right at the start.
A natural slow-starter
This leads me perfectly to my final point: Roberto Firmino has generally been a slow starter for Liverpool.
The mess that was the start of his first season on Merseyside aside, Firmino still didn’t manage to quite hit the ground running in the 2016/17 or indeed 2017/18 campaigns.
In Klopp’s first full season, the Brazilian struggled up until Christmas, enjoying a good month in October whereby he scored three and assisted four but otherwise the striker only found the net two other times – both in the same match against Leicester.
It was a similar story last season.
Despite actually enjoying a fruitful first month of the season, scoring against his old side Hoffenheim to cement Liverpool’s Champions League place and putting in a pair of goal/assist performances against Watford and Arsenal, it wasn’t until around December/January time that Firmino really burst into life.
18 of the Brazilian’s 27 goals and 12 of his 17 assists came from December onwards, giving him 30 goal contributions in his last 34 appearances of the season.
Those are ludicrous numbers by anyone’s standards and can only be bettered by Mohamed Salah who registered 38 (26 goals, 12 assists) in the same period – for anyone interested, Mané registered 19 (15 goals, 4 assists).
The point is, Firmino starting a season slowly is nothing new and fans shouldn’t be so quick to panic just because one of our insanely talented front three hasn’t scored in the first tow games of the season.
I have no doubts that Firmino will be just as effective as he was last campaign, let’s just show a bit of patience, eh?
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