Liverpool’s successful implementation of an inverted full-back system is not the first time they have experimented with a defensive back three during the Premier League era.
A 3-5-2 formation was famously the Reds’ go-to system for the majority of Roy Evans’ stewardship in the nineties, while Brendan Rodgers would briefly experiment with a 3-4-3 set-up during the 2014/15 season as he looked to rescue his struggling side’s fortunes.
The former Liverpool boss would stumble upon such a system by accident, during a 1-0 defeat to Basel in the Champions League in October 2014. The Swiss outfit lost full-back Behrang Safari to injury inside the opening 10 minutes, with manager Paulo Sousa replacing him with winger Derlis Gonzalez.
The Portuguese admittedly grew frustrated with the winger’s reluctance to cover the right-back position, instead pushing forward into his favoured role with the wide-forward forced inside as a result. Consequently Basel were playing 3-4-3 by accident, but boasting an extra man in midfield and offensive situations, Rodgers noted how difficult it was to play against.
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Things got worse for Liverpool over the next two months as both Mario Balotelli and Rickie Lambert flopped in attack. With the Reds lacking the intensity to press sufficiently, their whole system fell apart, culminating in a 3-1 defeat away at Crystal Palace at the end of November.
Consequently, Rodgers is credited as ‘locking himself away in his office for the next few days’ as he tried to think up a solution, with that 3-4-3 set-up firmly in his mind. Occasionally, he would call in his staff to share ideas, while one night he is said to have been ‘up at 3am making himself tea and toast before scribbling down his thoughts’.
Initially steadying the ship before a full implementation of the new system, which was in contrast to Rodgers’ favoured 4-3-3 and 4-1-2-1-2 formations which he had built in his philosophy around in the 180-page dossier he presented to Liverpool owners FSG when interviewing for the job in the first place, the Reds fully unleashed their new formation at Old Trafford in mid-December. While they were unable to find a way past Manchester United’s unbeatable David De Gea as they fell to a 3-0 defeat, the signs were encouraging enough to suggest a revival was imminent.
With this new formation, Liverpool lost just two of their next 23 matches, with extra-time and penalties required to eliminate them from the League Cup and Europa League respectively, and putting together a 13-game unbeaten run in the Premier League before their campaign fell apart again.
The Reds were two points off the Champions League places in fifth place heading into a home clash with fourth-placed Manchester United in late-March. Defeat to the Red Devils in December had left them down in 10th, 10 points off their bitter rivals. Yet a 2-1 defeat at Anfield would undo all their hard work as Rodgers swiftly reverted back to his favoured formations and what previously hadn’t been working in the first place.
Winning just two of their final nine Premier League matches, a pathetic 6-1 loss away at Stoke City on the final day of the season consigned them to a sixth-place finish - eight points off United and the top four. While Rodgers would be afforded a stay of execution, he was dismissed the following October with Jurgen Klopp appointed as his replacement.
Since then, the only way has been up for Liverpool, with the Reds winning every major honour and being virtual Champions League ever-presents with the German at the helm. Until the season just gone. A look back over the 2014/15 campaign and comparisons start to emerge.
While Klopp’s sides struggles were predominantly in midfield rather than attack, his team were devoid of intensity and lost their identity as a result. Like his predecessor, he would switch to an unfamiliar three-man defence, of sorts, in an attempt to solve the woes.
To be fair to the Liverpool boss, such a switch worked. Their inverted full-back system, which sees Trent Alexander-Arnold move forward into centre-midfield when the Reds are on the ball as 4-3-3 becomes 3-2-2-3, coincided with an 11-game unbeaten run.
But while Liverpool picked up 25 points out of a maximum 33 during that run, it still wasn’t enough to secure Champions League football. Ultimately leaving themselves too much to do, they ended up four points off the top four in fifth. At least their form created a feeling poles apart from the one at Anfield come the end of 2014/15, with Klopp’s Reds now confident of further recovery heading into the new season.
As things stand, it does seem that Liverpool’s new formation is here to stay. And perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, seeing as one of Klopp’s most-trusted lieutenants has historically used the system and was one of the very members of staff Rodgers turned to when switching formation himself nine years ago.
Assistant manager Pep Lijnders first joined the Reds in the summer of 2014, initially serving as the club’s Under-16s manager. While these days Liverpool line up in the same formation from first team all the way down the Academy, with it consequently intriguing to see if the youth sides also switch an inverted full-back set up this season, the Dutchman had his side lined up with a three-man defence throughout the 2014/15 season.
As a result, Rodgers did sound him out when making his own switch to a back three.
"Later in my first year, Brendan was thinking about changing to a back three with the first team,” Lijnders recalled to the Coaches’ Voice last year. “He asked Alex (Inglethorpe) to send me in to speak with him.
“He wanted to know how I set my team up, how I pressed, what my ideas were. It was really just a very nice conversation about football, about life. One and a half, maybe two hours, with a cup of tea and a biscuit – the English way.”
Of course, Lijnders’ system and Rodgers’ own variation were not identical, the same as Klopp’s utilisation of an inverted full-back does not replicate it now. For starters, both the Dutchman and the Northern Irishman fielded a straight defensive back three, with the former playing a diamond midfield rather than a two-man pairing.
However, Lijnders would not use a 3-4-3 system during his only senior managerial role to date. At NEC Nijmegen in 2018, prior to returning to Anfield, he utilised a more traditional 4-3-3 set-up.
Klopp’s use of the formation now is arguably the best of both systems, having that fourth man defensively who is free to step into the box midfield when Liverpool are on the ball. Of course, Alexander-Arnold is that player, with the Reds’ current tweak around pushing a defender into midfield in complete contrast of Rodgers’ own variation where a midfielder (Emre Can) switched to defence.
But the sight of Alexander-Arnold as a number six is not a new phenomenon. He occupied that role for Lijnders for Liverpool Under-16s back in 2014/15.
“At Porto, I was working every morning, afternoon and evening – but with different teams, and it was exhausting,” Lijnders said. “I still wanted to work every morning and afternoon and evening, but I wanted to put all of the information I had learned into just 20 players. I wanted to coach my own team.
“At Liverpool, I had that team! Rhian Brewster, Ben Woodburn, Herbie Kane, Yan Dhanda, Caoimhin Kelleher as goalkeeper… and, of course, Trent Alexander-Arnold.
“Trent was incredibly passionate, a right-sided defender who pushed himself to the limits every single day. He always wanted more, and I saw a boy who I felt needed confidence from the coaches.
“So, the first thing I did was make him captain, and put him in the number-six position in midfield. I really believe that your best talents have to have the ball most, so I played three at the back, a diamond midfield and a front three.
“Ben Woodburn played as the 10, and Trent was the six. I saw a player who could play the final pass from almost everywhere, and as the six you have the chance to do that.
“Ruben Neves had been my six in all the youth teams at Porto, and from the middle Trent has that ability to reach even more positions with his passing. That’s why you see him playing inside for the first team so much now, while Mo Salah plays on the outside.
“I had one season with Trent. He scored goals, created goals and played passes, but he also became more responsible because of the captaincy and also the position. With time, I really saw him grow.
“Did I know then that he was able to go and do what he did at 18, 19 and beyond? Of course not, because nobody can know – but to see that growth as a person, a player and a leader is the most beautiful thing for somebody who works in an academy. I’m so proud not just of what he has done, but of who he is. He is an inspiration for so many boys here in Liverpool, and he has taken the role of the right-back to a completely different level in the world of football."
Little did Lijnders know when recalling that campaign to the Coaches’ Voice that Klopp and Liverpool would be calling upon such an experience less than a year later. At the time, such a switch was unexpected, yet the German would hint it is something that his side have slowly worked towards.
“Yeah, it’s not the first time,” he told reporters after his new system's first direct outing against Arsenal back in April. “We did that before but maybe it was not that obvious.
"We did that before, where we put Trent inside. Today in the build-up, Trent played more inside. Double six, that’s how it is. We need to get used to it, obviously. I would say it is a big step to do that in a game against Arsenal.
“It opened up different opportunities for us. If you watch it back you will see that it will have to be learned when to use it. Hendo was not wide, stayed inside. Then we could really pass first pass down to Mo. Mo kept the ball really well today and we could go from there. I thought he did well. It was not the first time, but not for a while we executed it.”
The Reds’ switch to an inverted full-back set-up is no happy accident, with the signing of Alexis Mac Allister supporting the notion that this evolution is here to stay. Rather than pacing around his office at 3am, fuelled on tea and toast, in search of a solution, this next phase of Klopp’s Liverpool, with Alexander-Arnold at the very heart of it, has been nine years in the making.
