Come Sunday night, one of the biggest caveats of the Premier League season will be no more. There may be plenty to say about Liverpool, but none of it will come with the rejoinder “but they haven’t done it against a top side” once the final whistle has blown at Anfield after Chelsea’s visit.
It has been a curious aspect of the fixture list so far that Liverpool’s first seven games have pitted them against sides currently outside the Premier League’s top half. A tally of 18 points from those games is enough to have them top of the table, their brushing aside of every opponent, bar Nottingham Forest, suggesting they fulfil one requirement of a prospective title challenger: rarely frittering away points against teams they should beat.
Arne Slot knows as well as anyone that another facet — performances against the league’s best — will be tested in the weeks ahead. By December 5 they will have gone from facing only the worst of last season’s top eight to all bar one of them, while juggling their three most difficult Champions League matches. Slot has pointed out the favorability of the early season fixture list almost as frequently as a rival fan might be expected to. The Dutchman himself is insisting that this is the period where he and his formative side must be judged.
“[The] fixture list,” he said on Friday, “we have to take [that] into account as well. Now we face even better players.”
If it is fair to say that the coming weeks will offer a better reading of Liverpool, but it is no less reasonable to note that they are approaching those games in as fine a shape as anyone could have expected given the tactical and psychological damage that Jurgen Klopp’s exit was supposed to cause. The Premier League’s most surprisingly exceptional creators of high grade shots are rolling into town. It is equally curious that Chelsea will be facing England’s most miserly defense.
Not that Liverpool have not been a great defensive team in recent memory. It just seemed like a byproduct of their dominance. When Klopp’s team pressed at their most ferocious it was more an act of playmaking, easing their own route to goal, than aggressive miserliness. As the off ball intensity died off still numbers flooded forward and goals conceded went up, 47 against in 2022-23 and 41 in 2023-24. Still Klopp could get away with that because he had the two best defensive players in the game.
It helped Slot no end in his early months that he still had Virgil van Dijk and Alisson operating at something approximating the peak of their powers. The former received glowing praise once more for his leadership qualities. As for the latter, his manager did not attempt to downplay Alisson’s absence for an instant.
“Alisson is for sure not with us in the upcoming weeks, that’s clear,” said Slot. “So, that’s a blow for him and for us because I think he did really well this season and did so well for this club for so many years.”
Even in front of a miserly defense that is giving up around nine shots a game, Alisson is finding his moments to shine. Two goals conceded from the 17 shots on target he has faced gives Liverpool the best defensive record in the Premier League, him the best save ratio of any goalkeeper in the competition to have faced over 10 shots. From the small number of shots he has actually faced, to have prevented 2.77 goals is almost laughable. Here is, by some distance, the best goalkeeper in the world.
Liverpool might reasonably contend they also have the best backup goalkeeper in the Premier League at least in the form of Caoimhin Kelleher, who performed as impressively in the win over Bournemouth in September as he has on many occasions of late (no wonder Giorgi Mamardashvili is Anfield-bound next summer given the frequency with which Alisson seems to suffer injuries). No matter how good Kelleher is, however, he is not the best goalkeeper in the world. Take that level of talent out and any defense will suffer.
Not so much, however, that an avalanche of goals is inevitable. After all, Alisson hasn’t had much to do this season, nor have he, Kelleher and (for 11 minutes against Crystal Palace) Vitezslav Jaros seen shot after shot whistle past their posts. Liverpool aren’t giving up many openings at all, their 5.17 non-penalty expected goals (npxG) allowed the best in the league by nearly a whole xG.
There appears to be a little more restraint in how Liverpool go about things. Per Wyscout, they allow around 10 percent more passes per defensive action than last season. The early signs are that in possession they are operating a little bit deeper from front to back, limiting the opportunities for rapid transitions into the spaces their rearguard might vacate.
The switch to a midfield more closely resembling a double pivot has brought a more muscular shield to a backline that had been crying out for a destroyer ahead of them ever since Fabinho’s legs left him. You might not be a defensive power with one of Ryan Gravenberch or Alexis MacAllister at the base, but both make for a dynamic pairing, each sitting in the league’s top 20 for ball recoveries.
Behind them, Ibrahima Konate looks more like the player he was becoming in his first year in England while Andrew Robertson appears to be playing a more reserved role. Trent Alexander-Arnold, too, is just a touch more conservative in his inverting into midfield. All that eases the burden on Liverpool’s center backs, who don’t have to be quite as great as Van Dijk often is at covering space down the flanks. Just look at how hard it is for opponents to get to the byline.
All this might well change in the weeks ahead. Liverpool’s structure looks to be in place. The best attackers blow right through that anyway. There is nothing to say that Jadon Sancho and Noni Madueke can’t simply isolate their full back on Sunday afternoon and blow by him, nor that Cole Palmer will not be able to find space between the lines. That is to say nothing of the damage Bukayo Saka, Florian Wirtz and Kylian Mbappe might do in the weeks ahead. Whether Slot’s system will hold against them is for now unknowable. What we do know, though, is that the signs of an improved defense are there.
Scroll down for our predicted score in this and every other one of today’s Premier League games:
Saturday, October 19
Tottenham 2, West Ham 0
Fulham 1, Aston Villa 1
Ipswich 1, Everton 2
Manchester United 0, Brentford 0
Newcastle 1, Brighton 1
Southampton 0, Leicester 2
Bournemouth 1, Arsenal 2
Sunday, October 20
Wolves 1, Manchester City 3
Liverpool 2, Chelsea 1
Monday, October 21
Nottingham Forest 0, Crystal Palace 0
