5 Ways Brentford Hurt Liverpool's Defensive Wall
Why one of the most defensively secure partnerships in the history of the Premier League struggled with the new boys from the Championship.
Liverpool and Brentford put on an incredible show.
The scoreline suggests action and goals but it still doesn’t capture the madness on the pitch in London.
Six goals, one a screamer, two goal-line clearances in the first 15 minutes, disallowed goals, and at least one penalty shout - yet no play-acting, gamesmanship, diving, or cowardice. Almost certainly the game of the season so far.
Chances were created at all ends, with Liverpool having 6 shots on target to Brentford’s 4, resulting in a final scoreline of 3-3.
Sky reported the xG to be roughly 2.6 - 2.3 in favour of Brentford. xGPhilosophy posted to their Twitter account 3.09 - 2.43 for Brentford too.
Caley Graphics, run by Michael Caley, using Opta data, reported a lean toward Liverpool of 2.1 - 2.5.
Why the xG data from these models was different, I’m not sure and it’s a little too soon after the game to say - but one guess is that Caley’s model uses only the highest xG opportunity from each of Brentford’s goalmouth pinball struggles, rather than counting anything twice.
Check out @Caley_Graphics’ xG shotmap below:
Whatever the balance of chances, it’s certain there were lots of them.
According to Wyscout data, the last team to achieve over 2.5 xG against Liverpool was Manchester United in Liverpool’s 4-2 victory in May. Before that, it was Manchester City in February in their 4-1 win at Anfield with Fabinho and Henderson as centre-backs.
While we don’t yet have the exact Wyscout xG figures for the game, it seems certain that this is the third most xG Liverpool have conceded in 2021, and the highest for any game with preferred senior centre-backs in the starting line-up.
So how did Brentford cause such a nightmare for Liverpool’s defense?
Here are 5 key factors or strategies they employed.
#1: Tripling up against Trent aerially
For all the in-depth tactical analysis you can do about shape, patterns, and movement, sometimes it’s simple actions that can make big impacts.
Two of the goals Liverpool conceded came directly from Trent having 3 Brentford players to deal with at the back post for crosses in the air.
You can see the cluster here for the second goal just as the ball is being whipped into the box:
And again here on the third goal:
For both of these situations, Brentford avoided packing the centre of the pitch and instead created overloads on the right, pulling Liverpool’s formation to that side - while simultaneously preparing an overload on the left-of-centre channel around Trent.
According to Wyscout data, Trent has an all-time aerial duel success rate of 35%, which is not a fantastic number even for a full-back. Across the very small sample size of this season in the Premier League, his duel success rate prior to this match was a much improved 62.5% (from very few duels) - but he’s still the obvious weak link in a backline that is the strongest in the league aerially in the centre.
To Trent’s credit, he held off the players immediately around him - losing the duels but not giving up a clean heading opportunity on goal. However, this served to create goalmouth scrambles, and chaos around the six-yard box is always dangerous.
Brentford capitalised on this and it was key to both the goals they scored, and the xG it generated - showing us it is a surefire way to open up dangerous opportunities, not just lucky ones.
#2: Winning aerial battles against Matip
On the other end of the spectrum is Joel Matip.
Per Wyscout data, Matip has the highest aerial success rate in Liverpool’s team this season with 70.83%, and second most in the league behind Burnley’s Charlie Taylor (who has the advantage of playing as a full-back).
Yet Ivan Toney managed to play against Matip in the air admirably in this game and his flick-ons to Mbeumo caused Liverpool lots of trouble and helped advance Brentford up the pitch on multiple occasions, creating some possible openings in the process.
Toney has a success rate of 50% in aerial duels but he’s also competed in the second most in the league with 54. While 50% doesn’t sound high, he goes into games to compete against the most aerially dominant players in the opposition team again and again over 90 minutes. He has bullied many centre-backs already this season.
According to Wyscout data, no other attacker or midfielder has a better success rate than him in this area.
He’s tall, he’s strong, and he’s got a very good jump on him.
With him and Mbeumo going man to man with Matip and VVD, the game plan was clear: put Toney with his back to Matip to drop deep and flick on, and have Mbeumo attack the space.
With his back to Matip and the goal, and running toward the long ball, he has the run on Matip and the physical advantage of being between the ball and the defender. Considering how good he is in the air, this move proved incredibly difficult to stop.
#3: Avoiding Van Dijk in carefully prepared set-pieces
Even though Matip may have a higher aerial success rate, a part of me feels like that’s a side effect of the Van Dijk Black Hole phenomenon, where opposition players try to play around VVD rather than through him.
The best way to illustrate this is through a heatmap from Opta showing all the touches Crystal Palace players took in a game against Liverpool toward the end of the 19/20 season:
You may have to click through to fully view the map, but the only areas where Palace didn’t touch the ball all game were Liverpool’s box and that area of the pitch where Van Dijk stands.
Teams try their best to avoid Virgil as much as they possibly can. Brentford today were no different.
Check out this still from one of Brentford’s free-kicks which they took short to create a better crossing angle:
This is just one such example, but I’ve highlighted Van Dijk to show that he’s the Liverpool player on the edge of the box furthest away from any opposition player.
This is very unlike Virgil.
Normally, he’s always in the right position and always in the thick of the action. He defends like he’s magnetic.
I can’t be sure how Brentford planned their set pieces, and each routine will be different too, but this theme appeared across a few free-kicks - and I have a theory.
First, instead of Brentford players being spread evenly across the box to maximise their chances of one player being in the right position, Brentford operated with a front-group and a back-group - isolating VVD between them.
Check out this free-kick which wasn’t taken short from later in the game:
Virgil is again isolated in the middle with a 2 man group ahead and behind, with a runner coming in at the back post. As it happened, Virgil’s magnetism must have kicked in as the ball sailed directly onto his forehead.
But the set-up is the same across a few set pieces. In the first one pictured, the run across VVD from the Brentford player, pulled Virgil from the edge of the waiting pack into no man’s land, and the ball was floated into the back group.
So, executed as intended, my suspicion is that Frank deployed a front-group and a back-group, knowing that Virgil likes to defend free-kicks from the centre, and maybe tried to use movement to coax VVD toward the front group. Then, knock the ball long to the back group - or, in the case of the first goal, play it cheeky down the channel and have the front-group flick it onto the back-group.
Another reason why this is successful is that Liverpool tend to defend free-kicks with a high line. That means you can’t drill a beautiful flat ball in for a forward to attack - he just won’t get to it in time with the distance he has to cover. So the optimal route is to hang a ball in the air with a slower floated cross, which gives your attackers more time to advance up the pitch to meet it. Then the second ball becomes the opportunity.
The reason teams normally struggle to do this against Liverpool is Van Dijk and Matip. They win floated balls all day.
But if you can isolate Van Dijk and double up on Matip in the process, then you can float a ball deep, win the header, and open up space for a second ball chance.
With this approach, Brentford had way more set-piece joy than most teams Liverpool come up against.
#4: Fast transitions from deep to a two-man strike force
I’ll keep these last two shorter, as we’ve already touched on them earlier - but there were two specific moves the front two of Brentford executed that seemed to serve different purposes.
The first is the classic big man little man routine we all know and love. Liverpool fans will remember Heskey and Owen pulling this off, and some may even remember Toshack and Keegan doing similar.
I outlined above how and why Ivan Toney was able to win so many specific types of headers against Matip. Typically, when he won those headers, they either went directly behind him down the centre of the pitch or they ended up out wide.
The central flick-ons opened up Liverpool a few times and caused the need for some excellent defending from Van Dijk, Matip, and Henderson in particular.
This route was effective because it bypassed Liverpool’s press and their midfield - two things Frank knew his team couldn’t match, as he spoke about both pre and post-match. Fabinho didn’t seem to be in the game all that much from a defensive perspective as Brentford tried to bypass him with every opportunity they had.
The central flick-ons meant that one defender - normally Matip - was pulled out of the defensive line creating space for Mbeumo to burst into and initiating a chase. Later in the game this pattern became a little more varied, but the mechanics were the same: flick-on down the middle into the space vacated by the centre-back.
While Liverpool defended this well, it meant wide-open defenses, last-ditch tackles, and a bit of luck with catching opposition attackers in offside traps. On another day, this could have made life much more difficult.
#5: Playing into the space behind the fullbacks as an out-ball
The final point is kind of a 4b, rolling on from the previous one.
When flick-ons were directed into the channels rather than the central spaces, Brentford seemed to behave differently.
There was less intention to drive forward to goal - perhaps knowing that VVD would have the run on them in that situation - and instead a focus on progressing play up the pitch and having the team catch up with them.
This is a pretty safe strategy for Brentford as Liverpool will always play with huge spaces behind the fullbacks; it’s part of Liverpool’s tactical gamble.
Instead of using that space as an avenue for direct attacks, it was used as a means to relieve pressure on the Brentford defense, to progress the team further up the pitch, and crucially to win free-kicks.
Winning freekicks grants a moment to rest and allows them to execute their attacking set-piece plays. Ultimately, while the central flick-ons created dangerous looking opportunities, it was the free-kicks in wide areas from channel flick-ons that led to Brentford scoring crucial goals.
This is Brentford knowing what tools they have, what space they will find, and how well (or poorly) the opposition will be able to defend against your plans.
Why try to come inside and dribble Van Dijk when you can draw a foul and execute a free-kick routine designed to bypass Van Dijk completely?
Brentford troubled Liverpool’s first-choice defense more than any other team has managed for a very long time. They did this by focusing on one or two core strengths, avoiding Liverpool’s core defensive strength, and exploiting the few defensive weaknesses Liverpool have.
If Thomas Frank’s team can play every side with such preparation and execution then they’ll have a very exciting season to look forward to.