Premier League 2018/19: Huddersfield Town vs Liverpool

After the international break, the Premier League is back. On weekend Jürgen Klopp´s team faced Huddersfield with their German coach David Wagner. Liverpool tried to continue their unbeaten streak, but Klopp still decided to rotate and give some of his important players a break.

Huddersfield on the other side tried to finally get their first win. In an equal game, Liverpool struggled to create chances while Huddersfield was dangerous, but you could still observe their big problems in possession as well as defensively.

Against Huddersfield Liverpool played without Wijnaldum, Firmino, Keita and Mané in their starting eleven. Again, Daniel Sturridge started as the central striker and got supported by Mo Salah and Adam Lallana on the wings. New-signing Xherdan Shaqiri started alongside James Milner and Jordon Henderson in midfield.

David Wagner trusted again his unusual formation. Huddersfield played with a back-three which got supported by a five-man midfield line. Behind striker Depoitre Alex Pritchard tried to support Huddersfield´s lonely striker.

Huddersfield with aggressive man-marking

As the clear favourite of that game, Liverpool tried to build-up from behind. However, they rarely managed to advance into Huddersfield´s half with a short-passes. The reason for that was Huddersfield´s man-marking. The man-marking created a game with a lot of 1v1 duels and rarely periods of stable possession for one team. The team of David Wagner successfully destroyed the rhythm of Liverpool´s build-up while they struggled to find a solution against that pressing.

Usually, Depoitre and Pritchard would man-mark the centre-backs while Mooy would push higher to man-mark Henderson. Building-up through the middle was therefore very hard for Liverpool because Huddersfield could immediately pressure the ball carrier. As a result, they often tried to play through the wings, but their fullbacks got also pressured by Huddersfield´s wingbacks.

Especially, at the beginning of the game, Liverpool didn´t move a lot without the ball. To overcome an extremely man-oriented pressing body movement is more important than ball movement. For example, you can use a variety of vertical and diagonal movements to confuse the defenders and create moments in which the opponents have to switch. Because in the end, Huddersfield didn´t play a real man-marking pressing. They still tried to remain in their usual shape, but the focus was clearly on creating a lot of 1v1 duels and create a chaotic game.

In the second half, Liverpool was capable of using quick vertical passes with subsequently layoff passes. Therefore, they were able to overplay the first lines of Huddersfield. Of course, defending like this is extremely exhausting and when Huddersfield lost their energy they were sometimes too late to pressure the ball carrier and Liverpool could use those seconds of being unmarked.