Team Focus: City Win Highlights Benefits of Coutinho & Firmino Understanding
Three managers, to an extent, played a part in Liverpool’s 4-1 win at Manchester City on Saturday. There was Jurgen Klopp, of course, now going through a phase of public understatement, but clearly delighted at how his influence is beginning to be seen. There was Manuel Pellegrini who, not for the first time, made baffling team selections that compounded flaws left by injuries to key players. And there was the Brazil manager Dunga who, for reasons best known to himself, didn’t select either Philippe Coutinho or Roberto Firmino for Brazil’s last pair of World Cup qualifiers.
Puzzling as that selection may have been, raising questions about Dunga’s scouting, it was an outcome that, in the short term at least, suited everybody. Brazil drew in Argentina and then beat Peru to climb to third in the standings, while Klopp had two weeks to work at Melwood with Firmino and Coutinho.
The benefits of that time together were clear. Coutinho laid in Firmino to put in the cross that led to Eliaquim Mangala’s own goal. It was Firmino’s quick reverse pass that created the second for Coutinho. And it was Coutinho’s touch that beat Joe Hart to leave Firmino with an open goal for the third. Of the three other chances that Firmino missed, two were created by Coutinho.
Since Firmino arrived from Hoffenheim, it wasn’t entirely clear what he did. Dunga, similarly, seems to have regarded him as a back-up for Neymar rather than taking account of his individual qualities. He clearly wasn’t a striker in the old-fashioned sense of the term, but neither was he a winger. Nor, really did he create in the pockets now occupied by Coutinho and Adam Lallana. At Hoffenheim he was an industrious wide forward adept at cutting infield, but the evidence of Saturday suggests he might be at his most effective in this Liverpool side as a false nine.
His heat map in that regard is telling. There is, as you’d expect, a blot around the opposition penalty spot. But then there is a gap of perhaps 20 yards in all directions before a further blot that extended from a position just in advance of the centre-circle out to the flanks and then down the touchlines.
That is strikingly different to a more orthodox centre-forward such as Sergio Aguero. The Argentinian has that same area of activity around the penalty area but he has no corresponding gap, rather a blot that extends back 20 yards or so and then drifts up to the left wing, from where he likes to cut in. Or compare, say, Christian Benteke’s heat-map against Crystal Palace which is essentially a slightly more concentrated mirror image of Aguero’s, showing a lot of touches focused around the edge of the box, drifting back and to the right.
This is not an issue of ability or quality, rather of style: Firmino does get into goalscoring areas, but he also is adept at pulling wide - replicating his Hoffenheim role - and dropping deep to help link the play. Coutinho’s heatmap shows him operating just in front and to the left the centre-circle and just to the left of the D, while Adam Lallana does his work wider on the right.
That shows a certain dovetailing, but what is fascinating is what happens of Lallana, Coutinho and Firmino’s heatmaps are superimposed. There’s a large area of involvement that snakes from just to the left of the centre-circle, in front of it and forward to the right, but then a large gap just in front of that area, precisely in the sort of area the opposition defensive midfielders would look to operate when defending.
It was a strength of Brendan Rodgers’s side last season in the 3-4-2-1 formation that Coutinho and Lallana found awkward pockets of space. Klopp seems to have found a way of exploiting similar space with Firmino as a false nine. Add that to the understanding Coutinho and Firmino have developed and they could be devastating.
How big a role will Coutinho and Firmino play in Liverpool's quest to secure a top-4 berth this season? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below
