Jordan Henderson has praised Liverpool teammate Trent Alexander-Arnold for his passing against Rangers.
Trent was somewhere nearer to his best at Anfield on Tuesday night. And speaking to liverpoolfc.com after the game, Henderson said he was impressed with the Liverpool player’s passing.
“He’s done the basics really well and made some really good passes,” said the Reds captain. “Defensively I thought he was solid, which is important for us. I thought his performance was really good.”
It was certainly more encouraging from Alexander-Arnold after a raft of below-par displays.
Liverpool searching for the right balance with Trent
Looking at Alexander-Arnold’s stats for passing, you can see a huge difference between Tuesday night and Saturday’s game with Brighton.
On Tuesday, as per Fotmob, Trent attempted 74 passes, hitting the target with 61 of them. Against Brighton, the 23-year-old played just 49 passes, making 37 of them.
Interestingly, although he played some 25 passes fewer on Saturday, he tried 18 passes into the final third. That’s four more than against Rangers.
This shows quite clearly that Alexander-Arnold was much more conservative with his balls in the Champions League clash.
Perhaps in that we can see the benefits of Jurgen Klopp’s new system. It looks to have still allowed Trent plenty of time on the ball but meant that he was using it in lower risk areas. As a result, he was also more defensively solid.
Hopefully this can give Liverpool something of a best of both world’s scenario. Alexander-Arnold was still plenty threatening last night and also found the back of the net.
But with one more attacker on the pitch, there was less need to race forward to fill empty spaces in the final third. Of course, it could also have been that Rangers were simply poor and didn’t threaten often enough.
Whatever it was, it would be nice to see it again more often in the coming weeks. Trent’s passing has always been brilliant. But get him to use it in the perfect areas and he just may become unstoppable once again.
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