Anfield was witness to a Premier League blockbuster as Liverpool and Manchester City played out an exhilarating 2-2 draw on Sunday afternoon.
Post-match talk was dominated by the game’s high points, Mohamed Salah’s early contender for goal of the season, Rodri’s last-ditch goal-saving tackle and much more.
However from a Liverpool perspective, it wasn’t all positive. The opening 45 minutes saw the visitors put on a passing clinic, dominating the ball and pinning Liverpool into their own half for long periods.
Though the Reds managed to bounce back in the second half, some individual performances felt below-par, particularly that of captain Jordan Henderson.
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The 31-year-old has been an ever-present for Liverpool so far this season, featuring in all seven of their competitive matches. Yet, in recent weeks, and particularly on Sunday, he looked off the pace.
He made 36 pressures across the game, but just ten of them led to possession being regained within five seconds. He won just one of his four tackles attempted and both he and Fabinho were jointly dribbled past (3) more than any other Liverpool player.
Though a seasoned right-sided No.8, positionally at times the Liverpool midfielder looked a little out of sync with teammates around him, consequently struggling to close down play quick enough, and even at times leaving Fabinho behind exposed to City’s attacking threat.
Blame didn’t exclusively fall at the feet of Henderson, as alluded to by Jurgen Klopp after the game.
The Liverpool boss said: “Between our winger and eight it was easy, we were last line too passive, we called the midfield line back meaning neither Henderson or Curtis couldn’t really step out when needed, we were passive and they could just pass through us”.
Henderson’s issues weren’t exclusive to just his performance out of possession, but also with it where he often seemed to force forward passes that weren’t always on, cheaply turning possession over in critical moments, especially in the first-half when Liverpool struggled to sustain pressure in the City half.
Klopp talked about this too: “They had chances, didn’t score, but what it gives you a really bad feeling and leads to not playing football, and then we had these long balls which made absolutely no sense.”
Henderson was one of Liverpool’s biggest contributors to these nonsensical passes Klopp talked about, as highlighted above. In that first period, just eight of his 19 attempted passes found their intended target, equating to a success rate of just 42%.
We see an example of his poor decision making on the ball in the below. Liverpool win the second ball from a long goal kick and the ball is played into Henderson in some space.
He now has an ideal opportunity to get the ball down, recycle it and build an attack. He instead attempts a first-time aimless pass forward that eventually leads to the ball being handed back to City.
Although there were some structural issues across the side in the first half that were fixed at the break, leading to a better second-half display, that didn’t account for all of Henderson’s problems, and it’s difficult to pinpoint why he hasn’t quite been at his normal levels across recent weeks.
Perhaps one contributing factor could be that there’s an added onus on him to provide a more penetrative threat from that right side given the absence of both Harvey Elliott and Trent Alexander-Arnold.
This would mean he’s expected to play more balls into the box, and make more underlapping or overlapping runs to create openings for dangerous forwards like Mohamed Salah to profit.
Though competent in this regard, Henderson doesn’t tend to thrive in both departments, which could explain why we're currently seeing him struggle.
Time well tell whether it’s just a blip, or something more concerning, and the return of the likes of Alexander-Arnold will go some way to answering that. Liverpool fans will be hoping it’s the former rather than the latter.
