West Ham United manager David Moyes has backed Liverpool to find the right tactical balance once again - after insisting they do not press with the same vigour as they did in years previous.
It has been a season punctuated with struggles for Jurgen Klopp and his players thus far as they have been made to weather their worst start to a Premier League campaign since the 2014/2015 campaign.
Defeats at Manchester United, Arsenal, Nottingham Forest and on home soil to Leeds United - a first at Anfield since March 2021 - have sentenced the Reds to sixth place in the Premier League table ahead of the World Cup break. Such unexpected setbacks had resulted in Liverpool boss Klopp tinkering with various systems in search of a solution, before finally finding peace with his favoured 4-3-3 system once more.
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But former Everton manager Moyes believes that the game is in the process of abandoning its current pressing-centric phase and that both the Reds and their rivals Manchester City have decided to change their approach to a more direct one.
"Football goes in cycles and I’m not sure teams are pressing as much as a year or two ago," wrote Moyes, about pressing and playing out from the back, in a special World Cup column for The Times. "[Manchester] City don’t press as high and full as they used to and Liverpool have come away from it a little because they were getting caught out by teams playing through or over their press.
"There’s a real balance to be struck when playing out, because while playing out against a high press looks great to certain pundits and newspaper writers, if you’re a purist about the game you understand it involves heavy risks, and sometimes those risks aren’t worth taking."
Moyes is right. Liverpool's first considerable change in style during Klopp's era came after signing Thiago Alcantara from Bayern Munich in September 2020. Despite arriving at the age of 29, his ball-retention skills saw the Reds revamp their style into a more possession-based one. But the ease of that transition was made far more difficult due to the availability of the Spaniard - who has missed more than 40 matches since moving to Merseyside - and therefore left Liverpool in the thick of an identity crisis at points in recent seasons.
The age Thiago and his counterparts - such as Jordan Henderson and James Milner - has forced Liverpool to become more conservative off the ball as they simply do not boast the physical output that they did during their peak from 2018-2020.
As Naby Keita, Alex-Oxlade-Chamberlain and Harvey Elliott - a trio who would be profiled as the more athletic members of the Reds' engine room - have all spent lengthy periods on the sidelines in the last 12 months, Klopp has been made to reconfigure the roles of his senior members within the squad.
But Elliott's reinstatement into the starting XI so far this season has equipped Liverpool with a much-needed injection of energy, and such refreshing performances from the 19-year-old have further amplified exactly why midfield additions are the most pressing on-field priority for Fenway Sports Group and Klopp next summer, as the likes of Mason Mount and Jude Bellingham continue to be linked with a switch to Anfield.
Milner, along with Keita and Oxlade-Chamberlain, is expected to depart Merseyside when his contract expires next July, which would bring the average age of the midfield pack down, by some years too. Curtis Jones, extending his contract at Anfield earlier in the week is a further step in the right direction for Liverpool as they continue to future-proof their midfield, but more importantly, allowing Klopp to re-profile his squad with their players ahead of what he hopes will be a second great Liverpool dynasty.
Having reached the zenith of his managerial career after achieving pressing perfection with both Borussia Dortmund and the Reds, Klopp still retains the blueprint for domestic and continental success but is currently missing the profiles to rescale such heights.
Such issues can, and need to be addressed, in the upcoming transfer windows as Liverpool bid to return to the top table after a stuttering start to the 2022/23 campaign.
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