Arne Slot has said his new full-backs are not to blame for Liverpool’s defensive issues this season but his team must improve at set pieces given their increasing importance in the modern game.
Liverpool have been vulnerable throughout an otherwise impressive start to the campaign and have shipped seven goals in six league games so far. Slot’s side conceded just two in the first six games of last season’s title-winning season.
The introduction of two new full-backs, Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez, has been cited as a contributory factor as Liverpool adapt to the end of the Trent Alexander-Arnold/Andy Robertson era. But Slot insists the problem is collective, and identified Liverpool’s set-piece defending as in need of improvement after Crystal Palace scored from two when inflicting a first league defeat of the season on the champions on Saturday.
Before Tuesday’s Champions League clash against Galatasaray in Istanbul, the Liverpool head coach said: “One of our strengths last season was keeping the other team away from our goal and normally that doesn’t start with your defenders. Look into more details – we’ve conceded four goals from set pieces this season. We’ve changed our full-backs – we’ve changed a bit more than our full-backs – but when I think about the goals we’ve conceded the first thing that comes to mind is not that the full-backs are a problem.
“It’s always a team performance. Last season, we hardly conceded because 11 players worked incredibly hard to stop the other team having a chance. They are working incredibly hard this season but set pieces are a game in themselves sometimes. We have to go back to that and we have to prove in the upcoming games and months that we don’t normally concede from set pieces. It’s something we definitely have to improve. I see teams in the Premier League that win games by set pieces and we lose games by set pieces.”
Galatasaray scored 24 set-piece goals out of a total of 91 last season, although that figure includes penalties. Slot, who left Federico Chiesa out of Liverpool’s travelling squad due to what he described as a “little niggle”, believes set pieces are becoming increasingly decisive.
He added: “More and more in football it is becoming a set-piece game. It is a style you see more and more, especially in the Premier League because you can do much more such as attack a goalkeeper or even touch a goalkeeper and it’s not a foul. I know Galatasaray are strong at set pieces but we have been a force at set pieces last season. We won our last Champions League game with a set piece from Virgil [van Dijk].”
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Hugo Ekitiké, meanwhile, has said he welcomes the signing of Alexander Isak despite the threat posed to his place at centre-forward by the record £125m striker. Liverpool’s summer signing from Eintracht Frankfurt insisted: “We play in such a big club. I can’t see any big clubs playing with just one striker in the squad. It is good that Alex is here. For me, at my age, I have a lot of things to improve and learn. It is good that he is here.”
