Liverpool's improved structure under Arne Slot is the reason why recent slow starts to matches have not proved as costly as they did last season under Jurgen Klopp, Liverpool expert David Lynch has told Sports Mole.
The Reds were somewhat sluggish out of the blocks during their eventual 2-1 victory over Wolverhampton Wanderers at Molineux on Saturday, continuing a trend that has been a growing theme in recent matches ahead of Wednesday's Champions League meeting with Bologna.
Liverpool's last five outings have also seen them concede first against West Ham United and AC Milan, survive an early disallowed goal against Bournemouth and never get going at all in their defeat at home to Nottingham Forest.
However, since that shock loss to Forest - the only blot on Slot's copybook so far - the Merseysiders have won four straight games across three competitions, and risen to the top of the Premier League table.
"On the slow starts, it's an interesting one, because it wasn't just limited to the Wolves game - that's kind of been a little bit of a theme. It was a theme under Klopp, but in a kind of very different way, and I think this is an interesting one in terms of the difference between the two managers," David Lynch told Sports Mole.
"That slow start at Wolves did feel like Liverpool a little bit under the cosh for those 20 minutes. We have seen it in games before this season. And yet, you look back on those 20 minutes, what did Wolves create? So little.
"I don't want to always lean on expected goals, but I think it was something like 0.09 expected goals in those first 20 minutes that they generated, which I think tallies with what we saw is that, yes, they kind of got the ball in dangerous moments, there were transition moments happening quite frequently, but they did absolutely nothing with it, because Liverpool don't let them."
"The structure is so good"
All too often last season, Liverpool found themselves having to fight back from a losing position, with conceding the first goal becoming an unwelcome but seemingly unavoidable narrative of Klopp's final year at the helm.
In 2023-24, the Reds fell behind to the first goal in no fewer than 23 of their matches - almost 40% - leaving them with an uphill battle to claw back the points that would keep the pressure on the likes of Manchester City and Arsenal at the top of the table.
Indeed, of all the 15-minute segments in a match, Liverpool conceded their joint-most goals between the first and 15th minutes of games, and in the entire league only six teams shipped more goals in that period, despite Liverpool ending the campaign with the third-best defensive record.
Despite Slot's Liverpool sometimes being slow to get going themselves, they have only conceded the first goal in one of their six Premier League outings to date and boast the best defensive record in the division having only been breached twice so far.
"I think that is a big structure thing. When they were having slow starts under Klopp, they were almost instantly conceding - that was a regular theme for a while, literally for almost 12 months in the last part of Klopp," Lynch told Sports Mole.
"But here, because the structure is so good, the way Slot sets his team up - those two holding midfielders in front of a back four - it just gives Liverpool a structure whereby, if you do lose the ball and it ends up in a transition moment, they are there to clog the box, to make it difficult to get a good quality shooting opportunity away.
"So even when we saw that against Wolves, you weren't too panicked on the basis that that structure is there now."
© Imago
Slot wants Liverpool to be "more front-footed from the start"
With seven wins from eight matches in all competitions so far under Slot, Liverpool have been managing to weather early storms and still produce results - as they did on numerous occasions last season even when conceding first more often.
However, Lynch points out that Slot wants his team to be one setting the tempo early on in matches and putting opponents under pressure from the first whistle.
"I've no doubt that Slot will want those slow starts to stop. They want Liverpool to be a bit more front-footed from the start of games, but that structure is there as a kind of a safety net, and we are really seeing that," he added.
"I think once you give yourself that structure, and you're not finding yourself 1-0 down from 20 minutes in, then Liverpool started to grow into the game [against Wolves], started to really play the football and started to exert pressure, and then the only sort of negative part after that was the fact that the final 15 minutes, they were a bit wayward again.
"You've got to give that mitigation that it's still early days, they're still working certain things out, but if you can make yourself hard to score against, even in the moments in the game when you're being sloppy, that bodes really, really well going forward."
Slot's side are back in action again on Wednesday when they host an out-of-form Bologna at Anfield in their second match of the new Champions League format.
Bologna have won just once all season and will travel to Merseyside as rank outsiders, whereas Liverpool will be aiming to make it two wins from two against Serie A opposition in this season's competition, having recovered from conceding after only three minutes to beat AC Milan 3-1 at San Siro in their opener last month.
Barney Corkhill
