5 Things From Premier League Round 7: Too Cute By Half
Arne Slot got a little too cute with his team Saturday, and could Forest get relegated?
- Arne Slot Got Too Cute By Half
It's always startling how fast a team can go from "hallmark of champions!" to "total collapse!" but that's the lot in life for the biggest clubs in the world. That's where Liverpool find themselves, going from winning their first five games to losing the last two. It only takes a week at the mountaintop before everyone's tossing your ass off of it like Ra's Al Ghul.
Saturday's 2-1 reverse at Chelsea isn't as bad as some would have you believe, though that doesn't make it good, either. While they didn't create much in the first 45, the only shot they gave up of any worth was Moises Caicedo's ICBM from somewhere around The Thames that's hard to do a lot about. Sometimes, ball go in. Chelsea managed just 0.11 xG in the first half. It was soporific, but away from home and having lost the last two, it would do just fine.
It's after Liverpool equalized that things got goofy, especially after something new went TWANG on Ibrahima Konate. Instead of using Joe Gomez, an actual centerback on the bench, Arne Slot shifted Ryan Gravenberch back to that spot. That was after already shifting Dominik Szoboszlai to right-back at halftime, which meant not only were two midfielders manning half the defense, but they were manning the half of the defense behind Mo Salah, who is specifically asked to not help out defensively. They were on their own to try and Home Alone the right side.
So not only did Chelsea's winner spring from an overloaded defense that wasn't really a defense, but guess where three other big chances sprang from in the last five minutes of the game?
That said, there are things happening that not too many managers can do much about. Last season, which of these two Salah shots end up as goals?
The answer is likely both, certainly one, which turns the whole game. That's sort of been the story all season. The Atletico Madrid match would have been salted away much earlier if Salah had his radar on straight. Same goes for the Everton win. Things look much better with even buy-in level Salah.
Slot can't do much about Alexis Mac Allister's fitness, which is way short. There is no tactic or system that solves Konate or Mac Allister or Gravenberch at times being unable to complete a five-yard pass. But it is worrying that Slot didn't want to turn to Gomez, or to Jeremie Frimpong at fullback, this early in the season, especially late in the match when a point would have been fine. Perhaps too much expectation has been heaped on Connor Bradley after a great half-season under Jurgen Klopp two years ago. He still has a long way to go. There are issues to solve, for sure, but it's not panic stations.
- Could Nottingham Forest get relegated?
I'm always curious about not just the tactical shift of a managerial change like the one Forest engineered six weeks ago, but the mental one. Whatever Forest's goofball (and possibly cartoonishly dangerous) owner thought of Nuno Espirito Santo, he was a manager that got most of these players playing the best football of their lives and finishing higher than they ever had. There's a connection there. Which would make it all the much harder for a new guy to get new ideas across when Evangelos Marinakis binned off Santo and told everyone at the club what they were doing last season wasn't good enough, in some ways at least.
Ange Postecoglou looks caught in between. They kept things pretty tight in the first half at Newcastle (just 0.55 xG against), but then it was a kegger in the Forest penalty area in the second half (2.90 xG against). Forest didn't create anything, they didn't stop anything, and could have lost by a touchdown.
This looks like a team that is totally bewildered as to why they're being asked to transform so heavily from what helped them accomplish so much last season. It's fine to point out that Forest got the best of every margin last season and wouldn't be able to repeat that, and to ask Santo to evolve a bit. It's another to throw it all in the thresher and then ask Ange to take the scraps and fashion a DeLorean out of it.
Remember, Ange took a pretty big run at relegation last season. Only the utter incompetence of the promoted three last season prevented Spurs from ever having to really consider it. Leeds and Sunderland are better than those teams this season. Forest have the second-worst xGA on the season, and 5th-worst xG. They don't do anything well.
Firing Ange and trying to install a third system on the season could only lead to more confusion. Forest are in deep shit.
- Palace are going to be tired
Palace don't have a very big squad. Nine of the 11 who started in Poland on Thursday started Sunday against Everton, just 66 hours later or so. It was the same 11 that started against Liverpool the previous weekend. Eight of them have started six or seven matches in the Premier League already. They muzzled Everton for 60 minutes, and then were basically shards lying on the floor for the rest of it. They gave up 10 shots in the last half hour.
That might be the story for the season. Palace don't have a big enough squad to really take on the Europa Conference and turn around and field a new team less than three days later in the league and surge through both.
- I can't get enough of this turn from Semenyo
I'm trying to think of how far my hips would fly off my body if I tried to keep this ball in play while also pivoting 90 degrees toward goal on a dime, the way Antoine Semenyo did (in a typhoon no less!):
The torque.
- It's Dortmund Haaland again
Against Monaco earlier in the week, Haaland opened the scoring with a run that's best described as, "he decided it's time to score now":
There's like 0.7 seconds between these two frames:
Against Brentford, City once again just clipped a ball over the top and then told the cyborg up top to do something with it, which wasn't much of a problem:
It feels like Pep Guardiola has exhausted every possible option and tactical innovation over the past three or four seasons, and now that he's getting a little older is enjoying the simpler things in life, and can just say, "Yeah ok, let's just punt it up to that mutant and score. It's ok, I've done my concept albums and just want to do another punk one."
It doesn't always have to be art.