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Just by reading the title, you may be immediately questioning how Liverpool’s greatest strength could lead to their downfall against Southampton this evening, but there is a logic to it.
Football FanCast recently ran a story highlighting just how important Andy Robertson and Trent Alexander-Arnold are to the Reds, but their good work could actually lead to Liverpool slipping up in the title race.
One would assume that Hector Bellerin and Stephan Lichtsteiner, as well as Kyle Walker-Peters and Kieran Trippier, thought: “Why do I need to be conservative against them? They’re in a relegation scrap”, when Arsenal and Tottenham travelled down to St Mary’s this season – however, on both occasions, the Saints came away victorious at the expense of the full-backs performing well.
What’s the issue?
It goes without saying that in Robertson and Alexander-Arnold, Liverpool have arguably the best full-back pairing in the Premier League right now, and perhaps even in Europe – the former has nine league assists to his name this season, whilst the latter has six.
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However, for all their good work, their tendency to push forward on a regular basis has often left the midfield three stretched and having to vacate the middle in order to cover the wide areas.
This usually doesn’t get exploited too much by the opposition, but a main feature of Southampton’s latest win over a ‘top six’ side in Tottenham saw them hit the flanks time and time again, and to great effect.
What must Jurgen Klopp avoid?
Josh Sims, a player who had spent the first half of the campaign out on loan with Reading, was awarded the Man of the Match award for his efforts against Spurs despite only coming on at half-time with Shane Long.
Both players are willing runners with pace to burn, and they used it to full effect in the comeback win over Mauricio Pochettino’s men.
Sims and Long ran into the channels time and time again, which caused the Tottenham defence all kinds of trouble and left them stretched – two goals in five second-half minutes late on saw the north Londoners eventually succumb to the pressure.
As aforesaid, if Liverpool allow their full-backs to go bombing on down the flank, then Ralph Hasenhuttl would be wise to merely follow the exact gameplan which dispatched Spurs.
Klopp must instruct his star duo to ease their foot off the gas, just enough to quell any danger of the Saints taking another top six scalp at St. Mary’s, or Liverpool’s greatest strength could well end up being their weakness on Friday night.