Speaking on Sky Sports, Jamie Carragher has been discussing Liverpool’s lack of physicality this season.
This team, under Jurgen Klopp, made its name as one of the most physical, high-pressing teams the world had ever seen, playing what was known as ‘heavy metal football’.
However, over the past few months, this team has lost that edge, and according to Jamie Carragher, that may be down to Pep Lijnders’ influence.
Now, Carragher wasn’t pointing the finger directly at Lijnders, but he did theorise that the assistant manager may be having a negative effect on this aspect of the Reds’ game.
Carragher’s Lijnders theory
The pundit spoke about this Liverpool side and Lijnders.
“The only team it reminds me of is Arsenal under Arsene Wenger. They were a great footballing team, but their pace and physicality, teams couldn’t cope with it, but that team morphed into something really technical and it never won again,” Carragher said.
“I don’t know if there’s influence from Pep Lijnders, Klopp’s number two who has a huge say in what goes on. Maybe a Dutch way of thinking, getting players on the ball, but for me, from minute one, forget the quality of players, they were sprinting all over the pitch, but I don’t see Liverpool now sprinting and closing peple down, it’s not a Jurgen Klopp team I’m seeing now.”
Harsh
It does feel rather harsh to put the blame at Lijnders’ feet here.
Yes, the Liverpool assistant manager is Dutch and that association is there with technical ability and ‘total football’, but make no mistake about it, he loves this pressing system just as much as the next person.
His book was even called ‘intensity’, and anyone who has read that book would know that Lijnders shares a lot of his ideas with Klopp, and to suggest that he’s behind this drop off in physicality is wide of the mark.
One thing is for sure though, something has changed at Anfield.
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