RB Leipzig star Angelino believes Trent Alexander-Arnold is ‘unbelievable’ but he does see a weakness. Failing to exploit it was a problem last time, he feels.
Liverpool face RB Leipzig away from home, yet also at home. The game has moved to Budapest, much like the first leg.
The Reds head into it with a position of strength, though. They won the ‘away’ leg 2-0 and know a 1-0 defeat is still good enough to progress.
Though their defensive problems in recent weeks adds more than a cause for concern. They’re up against a good team but even bad teams beat Liverpool right now.
More worryingly is that RB Leipzig appear to have noticed a weakness with Liverpool. That’s according to Angelino, anyway.
The wing-back believes they can use their quality against them.
“We were a few times behind their full-backs,” said Angelino of the first leg, per the Daily Mail. “[Trent] Alexander-Arnold on the ball is unbelievable but he is too offensive.
“But that is his best [quality] so we have to exploit the weakness and hopefully, we can get a few more chances like we did in the first game.
“That was our mistake that we did not put them away.”
What RTK has to say
Yep. That’s the weakness. Alexander-Arnold is relevant to Angelino as they are on the same side – but the left flank mirrors it.
Liverpool have always left space behind their full-backs but covered it in two ways. Firstly, they had Joe Gomez and Virgil van Dijk as centre-backs – they’d sweep up long passes into the space.
Secondly, the midfield covered runs. Fabinho or Jordan Henderson would sit, then the two wider players in the midfield three would drift behind the full-backs.
That made it difficult to exploit the space.
But without an elite centre-back pairing and with a dysfunctional midfield, the Reds have a real weakness. We watched Chelsea exploit it over and over last week.
They just pumped balls into the channel for Timo Werner, stretching the centre-backs and creating isolations. That’s how they got their goal, in fact.
Liverpool’s make-shift team can sort of handle its own when in a set position. The moment opponents start dragging players out of shape, however, things fall apart.
RB Leipzig know this, it seems. Now it’s up to Jurgen Klopp to prevent it later today. It won’t be easy.
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