Arne Slot discovers ideal £116m playmaking solution: His numbers are off the charts
Wednesday night in the Champions League brought the kind of performance Liverpool have been waiting for. Needing a positive result in the round-of-16 second leg - following an awful 1-0 loss away to G...
Arne Slot discovers ideal £116m playmaking solution: His numbers are off the charts Wednesday night in the Champions League brought the kind of performance Liverpool have been waiting for. Needing a positive result in the round-of-16 second leg - following an awful 1-0 loss away to Galatasaray - the six-time European champions pulled out all the stops . It was arguably their most complete performance under Arne Slot in any match of his tenure to date - a comprehensive 4-0 win that could have been a lot more were it not for Galatasaray’s goalkeeper Uğurcan Çakır.
Plenty of Liverpool players reached their highest levels of the season - with Mohamed Salah again utterly dominant. Slot set his team up in a different manner than he has done in recent weeks and has found the magic formula. In this scenario Salah can move closer to the opposition goal while Milos Kerkez and Jeremie Frimpong can play to their strengths as wing-backs.
That - in turn - has had a hugely positive effect on Florian Wirtz . Arne Slot finds the magic formula for Wirtz Liverpool have been searching for a formula to unlock the £116m man on a consistent basis . Against Gala - they found it.
On the ball for much of the encounter Liverpool slid into a kind of 3-4-3 formation - with Ryan Gravenberch protecting the centre-backs and the wing-backs high and wide. With Salah working closely in tandem with Hugo Ekitike on one side it opened a pocket of space for Wirtz to make his mark. Lauded for his work in the “half space” at Bayer Leverkusen Wirtz has been unable to find himself in that goldilocks zone for the Reds.