Le Journal

Beata Olsson might be helping to single-handedly lift Liverpool Women when given the chance. The Swedish striker scored a hat trick in Saturday’s League Cup win against Sheffield United, making it six goals in four appearances and sending the Red Women to the quarterfinals of the tournament. The efforts also earned Olsson her first call up to the Swedish national team for their upcoming Nations League tie against France next week. “I think I’m in a good flow right now and the team helps a lot,” Olsson told the club website following the match on Saturday. “There’s a lot of good service, like Ceri [Holland] had two great balls today and [Cornelia] Kapocs was incredible as well. I just figured out where to be in the box and that helps me a lot. “[Confidence] comes in ebbs and flows. It was kind of expected, I think, when I got here that I had to get into things. But I also was very confident that this period would come. “So, I’m very happy that it came now and I think it’s been in a good period of time, in some good matches.” Liverpool move into the next phase of the tournament with a perfect record, three wins in three matches including against Durham and Sunderland, and will find out their next opponent on Tuesday. “It’s always fun to compete and this is a fun competition,” Olsson continued. “We want to progress in it. I think we did well here.” The Women head into another international break, but their next fixture is against Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium on December 6th (yes, we’re already facing December) at 12pm BST/7am EST.

Yesterday was yet another disappointing result in the still relatively young season. The result alone was not just disappointing, but even worse predictably so. After Liverpool once again failed to capitalize on some good, attacking football in the first 30 minutes, they concede on Forest’s first real chance of the match (a set piece, naturally). So, any encouraging words from anywhere is greatly appreciated, and wouldn’t you know it? Jurgen Klopp was there to try to lift spirits. “If he keeps the exact same team as last season – Darwin Nunez still there, Luis Diaz still there, for example – they start playing and have problems, [people say] ‘We need change,’” the former Liverpool gaffer said in an interview. “Now the new guys are there, and they are really good players. It’s just not working out at the minute. “Development needs time. Nobody can change that. People need time to adapt. It’s all good.” Klopp knows better than any manager that there will be good times and bad during a managerial tenure. And unlike the vast majority of managers, he always had the credit in the bank to get time to right the ship. Understandably, some corners of the Liverpool fandom are questioning whether Arne Slot deserves the same leeway that Klopp had during his reign at Anfield. It is a difficult situation, especially considering the continued grieving over Diogo Jota’s untimely death within the squad. Klopp is right that this squad is good enough to be among the top teams in the Premier League and Europe. Now Slot needs to figure out a way to get the squad to focus in both penalty areas, and start playing like champions again, or else his seat will start getting properly hot.

Liverpool’s poor string of results took on a rather notorious entry as the defending Premier League winners lost, at Anfield, to a Nottingham Forest that began the day staring at the relegation places. Losing 3-nil to a club at the bottom of the table feels, quite literally, like the type of result that might cause one to, well, feel like they’d reached the bottom. There’s no way to tell what the rest of the season will bring, but fans can at least be assured that no one in Red is feeling easy about this current run of results. Least of all, head coach Arne Slot. Slot was asked during the post-match press conference about this string of losses and if he felt like Liverpool’s form might bounce back. The Dutchman was quite candid in his response. “It is my responsibility. If we win or lose, it is my responsibility. But what I also see is the team and, by the way, our fans as well stay until the end, support the team until the end and the players keep on trying until the end. What I also saw today, but it wasn’t at City – and at City we are not the only team that struggles in the first half – and in every other game we’ve played, we’ve been the dominant team and we were able to create chances.” The result itself is, as noted above, shocking due to the perceived gap in realities between the two teams. The common brag that the Premier League is the most competitive league in the world, notwithstanding. Similarly, Slot provided a rather honest assessment. “How bad [the result is], that is difficult to measure, but it was very bad of course. Playing at home, losing 3-0, no matter which team you face is, of course, a very, very, very bad result. Unexpected if you look at the first half-hour of the game [because] in my opinion [it was] a good start from us. [I] haven’t seen us creating so much in the first half-hour of a game maybe throughout the whole season. I’m not sure because I don’t remember every single game now, but we were able to create a lot. The first time they arrived in our box, they scored a goal and it’s a very difficult cocktail to drink, or to have, if you miss out on your own chances and almost every time you concede one, the ball goes in.” I think the most revealing set of answers – besides a thoughtful response to folks directly questioning his personnel decisions – relayed what I felt while watching: a seeming disbelief on how in this specific match, the attack finally got off to a bright start while then hitting the wall and conceding in what feels like the first earnest chance. “Like I said, lately it is almost constantly that we miss our chances and then ones go in that we concede, but that will never continue throughout the whole season. We need to have that moment of energy of scoring a goal. If you are playing well and you go 1-0 up, the other team feels, ‘We’ve played half an hour now and we are 1-0 down and we’ve hardy seen the ball…’ The opposite thing happened – they got a big, big, big energy boost from scoring the 1-0. I see a lot of things where in a normal situation the result would have been different, but we are now in a difficult situation and then you need to do even more to get your results than when things go in your favour.” I think the gaffer has quite the job to do. And it’s possible that even if Slot manages to squeeze something out of this season – strong cup runs and clinching Top4, for example – I cannot write off him getting the sack, even if I would personally opt to give him more time. But his response to that question is a bit affirming because what I saw at Forest felt just as he described: every chance created by Forest became a goal. Meanwhile, Liverpool found great positions and either had the wrong player meet the ball, or Forest’s committed defense forced a block or deflection. It’s tough to say because the margins in top flight football are razor thin, but there is a…

Liverpool entered the match hoping to find their footing in the Premier League against bottom-of-the-table Nottingham Forest and were unable to get the job done. Overrun feels like too strong a word, but this is one of the few results over this rough patch where I’m more apt to tip my cap to the opposition. What took place on the pitch was complicated, but the results are simple: Liverpool were beat, at home, by Forest. Let’s take a closer look at what happened. Winners and Losers Winners Sean Dyche The Forest manager really deserves a lot of credit because the match essentially ended up the way he would have liked: a committed Forest denying Liverpool space and ensuring that they kept a clean-sheet. Perhaps it’d be a stretch to think he expected a win – and one where the scoreline likely flatters Forest if we look at the run of play. But it’s undeniable that his brand of football – absorb pressure and try to nip something from either a counter or a set-piece – is kind of the blue print for everyone looking to take down this Liverpool side. I’ll now send my computer through a disinfectant bath because I can’t believe this performance is making me give credit to Sean Dyche.NarrativeWe’ll go deeper into it in a later section but this match had everything: Liverpool being caught on a set-piece, VAR working against (and in favor) of Liverpool, and the inability to reverse a deficit. Liverpool’s season, in a nutshell, felt pretty well-contained within the match’s first 50 min. Losers LiverpoolIt was a bad result which compounds the run of form. This was probably their best chance at getting a result to right the ship, but things didn’t fall their way. Opta, again, has LFC underperforming their xG. Which passes, for me, the eye-test: Liverpool had chances. They weren’t clear – and I wouldn’t wager many of our opportunities came with clear looks given the opposition set-up feels predictable for us at the moment – but we could have and probably should have scored more. It feels like bad luck but after a string of such results, there has to be a reconsidering of the tactical approach. Talking Tactics Liverpool’s set-up, I think, highlights an issue with the tactical balance. Today, I’ll highlight that Arne Slot opted to start two midfielders – Dominik Szoboszlai and Curtis Jones – in what looked like an experimental rotation of right-backs/right-sided midfielders. It’s possible that this deployment was meant to disguise that Liverpool were looking to add bodies in the midfield to force movement from Forest. And it’s tough to say that it didn’t work from a chance creation standpoint – again, per Opta, Liverpool had approximately .6 more xG on the day. But it is reflective of a clear approach of seeking playmakers/offensive-minded players to remain on the pitch in order to unlock the low-block. Which, I think, has lead to the team being much more susceptible to being countered/falling victim to second-ball lapses in the box following a counter. I’m not a tactician and I do think Conor Bradley being unfit throws a massive wrench here – though, it must be noted, that Joe Gomez was available. Still, it feels like there are some tweaks that need to be made to try to force more space in the box and create more overloads in the areas of the pitch that might better serve the team. Is the answer going more defensive and encouraging a team to pull out of their defensive posture? Maybe, though I think it’ll both be difficult to do against a team like Forest who is fighting for survival and be a tough pill to swallow for Liverpool fans who want to see the likes of Alexander Isak, Hugo Ekitike, Florian Wirtz, and Mo Salah all lighting up the scoresheet. Perhaps, though, it might be worth it to tilt the balance of play back to better support the backline. Lastly, and this isn’t a knock on Milos Kerkez, but I did find our tactical set-up to be a bit strange in that the left-back often found…