Liverpool 3-1 Leicester: 3 Foxes positives and negatives

Finally… where is ‘Plan B’?

We have now seen what happens when the Foxes are against a team so far above them that possession is no longer a guarantee: a team which will dominate us, not the other way around. It was not pretty. Great defending can only mask what really happened.

29 shots Liverpool had. 10 of those on target. If they managed to get a few more on target then the King Power team would be much worse off and so far crushed under the heel of Jurgen Klopp it would have been genuinely upsetting. We created absolutely nothing.

Despite playing with confidence in this system, there was nothing outside of that system being built. That is concerning. Enzo Maresca is clearly a very talented coach bred from the positional play system as popularised by Pep Guardiola and adapted by Mikel Arteta: a system based around rotational positions, incessant pressure, and chance-creation. But without possession, chance creation does not happen, and rotational positioning can become disorganised and lethargic as a match progresses.

This is what happened. No ‘Plan B’. I remember under the Northern Irish head coach Rodgers we had a Plan B when playing some of our more devastating foes, and we saw better results even in losses out of those. This was because we did not stick to the same system for the sake of it, we altered to best suit whether we would try to dominate or be dominated by the opposition. This has to change when Leicester return to the Premier League.