Ole Gunnar Solskjaer commented on playing style after Liverpool beat his team 2-0 on Sunday. He was only half-right, however.
“They’re the most direct team in the league,” Solskjaer told Sky Sports at Anfield. “They can put teams under pressure, play them long balls, second balls, corners. They put everything at you and you’ve got to concentrate at the back.
“It’s not like they carve you open – they rarely play through us.”
Solskjaer is nearly right there but missed a key point. On the one hand, he’s right – Liverpool do go long and throw everything at you. They put teams under immense pressure and wait for them to crack.
The point, though, is that they only do that when necessary. To say they ‘don’t carve you open’ simply isn’t true. Liverpool play the style that’s necessary to beat the team in front of them. They regularly dominate possession, for one thing.
And some teams, like Manchester United, are difficult to ‘carve open’. Not that Liverpool didn’t try, of course.
They opened United up just before half-time when Sadio Mane could and arguably should have finished. And the Reds certainly should have scored a second in the early stages of the second half.
Mohamed Salah missed a sitter from a cutback before Jordan Henderson was desperately unlucky not to score after working a shot on the edge of the box.
After that spell, United pushed up and had much more of the ball. So, because Liverpool are such a wonderfully versatile team, Jurgen Klopp’s side sat back and tried to find space in behind. They found it with their late goal, of course.
They’d done similar at the start of the first half when United were pressing with a lot more intensity. And that’s the magic of this team.
Solskjaer suggested that Liverpool have one style – intense, direct football. They don’t ‘carve you open’, apparently. But of course he’d think that as his team have usually been ultra-defensive against Liverpool and stopped them doing so.
They absolutely can carve you open, though, and simply adapt to the side they’re facing.
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