I am definitely no Poch apologist, usually accused of the opposite, but I don't think his tactics were wrong today, in fact I think in their conception they were pretty much bang on the money. 433, match them up in midfield, hopefully not allowing them to get pressure overloads and meaning you can play out of their pressure as well, and switch it to a 451 without the ball and stop their FB's marauding.
I don't necessarily think it was our plan to spend so much of the game shelling, we just scored so early it affected the dynamics and forced Liverpool to be more proactive and us to adopt that protect we we've got mentality. And that wouldn't have been an issue, that's how Liverpool beat us in the Cl final for example, but
the omnipresent problem, as ever with Poch, is that his selections didn't quite marry up with his tactical application, and we weren't quite up to the job.
We have Eriksen and particularly Son not doing very good jobs of stifling their flanks, Son was repeatedly forgetting his role, wandering infield and doing nothing useful defensively at all, allowing their CB's an easy out ball to TAA and though Eriksen was better positionally, he was weak when run at by the likes of Mane and Robertson.
Then there was a long phase from about the 15-20th minute when we just stopped putting any pressure on them at all. I was fine with us leaving their CB's alone and not getting sucked up and out - that's smart - but as soon as they get into our half we have to start applying pressure, but we just stood off and allowed them to pop the ball about and get it out wide and get dangerous balls into our box. Once we started doing this an equaliser was always likely.
Maybe if Lamela hadn't got injured late on he'd have started out there instead of Eriksen, but surely, even though there are footballing compromises with him, Moura would have made more sense, tactically, as the wide right forward. From a defensive point of view he'd have more energetically and aggressively covered that flank and offensively he'd have given us some pace on the counter.
Then we had Sissoko and Alli as the 8's and Winks as the 6. Defensively they all put a shift in but Winks (17) , Sissoko (18) and Alli (25) received the ball 60 times in 90 minutes between them. That's nine less than Fabinho on his own. Our three forwards received the ball 62 times - 2 more than our midfield.
Once again the lack of "football" from this midfield was a real issue. And I include Eriksen and Son ion that too.
This midfield just did not want the ball when the pressure was on and we needed to do something other than just shell it and hump it long. If we could have played just a bit of football, got out of our half and given them something else to think about, it would have helped, but that didn't happen until Ndombele came on Sissoko was moved up and Liverpool went 2-1 up and started shelling themselves.
Son missed an open goal and got himself offside needlessly when in good positions and found by clever passes by Ndombele. Rose with a great assist for their goal (he's been culpable in so many goals this season) guilds it by wasting a great chance at the end, spunking the ball over the bar.
When I first saw the pen I thought it was a foul on Aurier, he's in possession and about to play the ball and mane just leaps in front of his swinging leg, but it is Aurier so who fucking knows, maybe I'm wrong,
On the plus side, Ndombele and Lo Celso at least look like footballers who aren't scared of the football. Which is nice change for our midfield. If only we had a coach who would pick them, we might play some.