Is Joe Gomez Going to Be a Problem?

Three ways Marcelo Bielsa tried to exploit Liverpool’s defense.

According to his center half Ron Yeats, the legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly had a formula. “Bill always said that if you've got a decent keeper, a decent center back, and a decent striker, you've got a chance of winning something,” said Yeats, who later spent decades as the club’s chief scout. “You then place the other players around them.”

Half a century later, Liverpool’s squad is still more or less true to Shankly’s vision. Jürgen Klopp’s side spent good money for a reliable keeper; instead of a lone striker they recruited a trio of world class attackers. As good as Virgil Van Dijk’s been in defense, though, it sometimes feels like the club has taken “decent center back,” singular, a little too literally. One was enough in the days of Shankly’s W-M formation. In a 4-3-3 like Klopp’s, your defense is only as good as its center back pair.

Which brings us to Joe Gomez. On paper, Van Dijk’s current partner complements him nicely. Brought up as a fullback, the England international is a younger, quicker, more adventurous defender who’s happy to lead sorties while Van Dijk holds the fort. Gomez logs more pressures, tackles, interceptions, and blocked passes; Van Dijk does the clearing and shot blocking in the box. It’s a dynamic Yeats came to appreciate when Shankly made the switch to a modern back four. "Tommy was a good user of the ball and I was good in the air,” Yeats said of his partner Tommy Smith. "If I got pulled out of the middle of the defense, I would expect Smithy to be where I should have been, and vice-versa.” Since Gomez worked his way back into the lineup last December after a long injury absence, Klopp has consistently preferred him alongside Van Dijk (though not without a few blips, like that time he yanked Gomez at halftime in the 4-0 disaster to Man City).

But is the partnership really Liverpool’s future, or is it just another case of placing whoever’s available around one decent center back?

As the kind of person who reads space space space, you’re probably also the kind of person who knows Liverpool’s Premier League-best 33 goals conceded last season masked an expected goals against total that put them fifth, several slots below Man City and, uh, Wolverhampton Wanderers. You may have seen a rolling xGA chart lying around somewhere and noticed that Liverpool’s chances conceded rose sharply in the back half of the season. If you’re an optimist, you’ll point out that the attacking numbers dipped around the same time and shrug the whole thing off as senioritis from the champs in waiting. If you’re a pessimist, though, you might see a suspicious correlation between Liverpool’s defensive slide and Gomez’s return from a year out of action.

And if you’re Marcelo Bielsa? You’ll set out to provide evidence of causation.

The Argentine great’s up and coming Leeds United up and came to Anfield last weekend with a plan: get behind Trent Alexander-Arnold and throw whatever they could find at Joe Gomez. For a half, at least, it worked about as well as a newly promoted side looking to go blow for blow with the title holders could hope. Here are three ways Bielsa’s team tried to exploit Liverpool’s defense.

Draw Gomez out to hit the space behind

If Liverpool’s defense were a buddy cop show—which by the way would be an infinitely better series than All or Nothing; make it happen, Bezos—Gomez would be the loose cannon to Van Dijk’s by-the-book sergeant. Having a young spitfire center back isn’t a bad thing. Gomez cuts out counters before they start, tracks strikers looking to link play, and protects the space behind Liverpool’s right midfielder—a space Leeds targeted so often that Klopp had to flip his midfield triangle, holding Naby Keïta and Gini Wijnaldum deep in defense while Jordan Henderson charged up the middle to mark Bielsa’s playmaking pivot, Kalvin Phillips.

But Bielsa, being Bielsa, had stacks of three-ring binders on Gomez’s tendency to leave his line. Leeds came ready to bait him. When their buildup reached the second line, the next look was to the left midfielder Mateusz Klich dropping in the halfspace to lure Gomez forward. From there, a quick third-man combination with Phillips in midfield or Harrison on the wing was all it took to put a ball into the space behind Gomez for a runner to chase. Gomez and Alexander-Arnold mostly managed to mop up, but when these attacks came together, like on Leeds’ textbook eleventh minute rotation or Klich’s over-the-shoulder flip to set up Leeds’ second goal, it was a thing of beauty.

Disorganize the offside trap

It’s SOP these days for top sides to slot a man into all five channels around a back four when they get to the attacking set. This often involves twisting the team’s shape so that a fullback occupies one wing, but some will push two midfielders all the way up between the center backs and fullbacks and keep their wingers wide (think Man City). Either way, you’re taking at least one, maybe two bodies who’d normally be connecting your lines and hurling them at the defense to get numerical superiority on the last line. From there, opposite movements—one player dropping to the ball while the next guy over cuts in behind—unsettle the defense to break through.

Bielsa didn’t have the patience to save this trick till the last phase of his buildup. Against a press like Liverpool’s, you’re not likely to make it that far anyway. Instead, he sent his center mids high early and often and used the pistoning five-on-four overload not to break a deep block but to confuse Liverpool’s offside line. Again, this tactic failed more often than not, but it was lower risk for Leeds than building through midfield and caused Liverpool more than a few butt-clenching moments.

In fairness to Gomez, he was pretty good in the offside trap. The problem was Liverpool’s fullbacks, who are used to getting forward in the attack, not getting pinned against the back line by touchline-hugging wingers and a minnow who’s outpossessing them. Keeping four defenders’ movements synchronized is harder than two, and it didn’t always work. “The first goal, both fullbacks were deeper than the center halves. That should never happen in football,” Klopp said after the game. Phillips took advantage of momentary lapse in Liverpool’s midfield to send a longball to Jack Harrison, who skinned Alexander-Arnold and, yes, Joe Gomez before slotting home.

Test Gomez’s timing

If Gomez timed his step-ups well enough against longballs over the top (sometimes just barely), he looked shakier against ground attacks. Facing a counter in the thirteenth minute, he made the baffling decision to try to play Patrick Bamford offside even though this would put Klich—who Gomez was looking right at!—in on goal; only an overhit throughball saved him. In the second half, Gomez was twice stranded too deep when Van Dijk tried to cut off a passing a lane and got caught in no-man’s land. The first time, Gomez’s pace saved the day. The second time, he failed to close down Klich and Leeds tied the game at three.

It’s hard to get too worked up about defensive errors in a game where Liverpool only allowed 0.6 xG, and Gomez’s passing and pressing played no small part in their dominance at the other end. This probably wasn’t the kind of game that will make Klopp reconsider his center back pair just yet. But it was the kind of game where coaches of bigger clubs than Leeds will be peeking over Bielsa’s shoulder and scribbling notes on his gameplan. ❧

Further reading:

• Mark Thompson, Leeds are Exhausting, Well-Drilled, and They've Played Their Hand Already (Mark's Notebook)
• Colin Malam, Anfield's Case for the Defence (The Telegraph)
• Karun Singh, Introducing Expected Threat
• Stuart James, Meet Joe Gomez: the Liverpool Star who Played Monopoly After Beating Barcelona (The Athletic)

Image: Lethal Weapon (1987)