Liverpool defence under the spotlight after 3-0 defeat

There were four pre-season matches on Sunday, with Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Southampton all in action.

There were plenty of talking points from this quartet of friendlies but Liverpool’s 3-0 defeat to Napoli was the most eye-catching result and the game that our latest Scout Notes piece scrutinises first.

Liverpool 0-3 Napoli

Mohamed Salah (£12.5m), Alisson (£6.0m) and Roberto Firmino (£9.5m) are set to join up with their Liverpool colleagues ahead of Wednesday’s final pre-season friendly against Lyon.

The Reds also have a Community Shield to contest against Manchester City next Sunday, which may provide Fantasy managers with more clues as to whether these players will be ready to feature in Gameweek 1.

Speaking the day after the 3-0 defeat to Napoli, Jurgen Klopp said:

We got the information a couple of seconds ago that everybody’s fine, everybody’s coming in time, they got their flights and everything so from this afternoon on Shaq, Naby, Bobby, Mo and Alisson will be in training, which is great.

So we have the game on Wednesday but obviously, we had to learn in this pre-season that we play the games pretty much always a bit in the wrong moment, but we had to play them anyway so it was just another training session.

But of course, you would like to get a bit more from training sessions than we got for example from yesterday. We play Wednesday the game against Lyon but we have to see how we do that, we organised it months back when we thought ‘OK, they come back, they can maybe play 10, 20, 30 minutes or whatever’.

We didn’t know in that moment it will be important for Shaq and Naby as well, but apart from that we have to prepare still the season and not only the game on Sunday, but of course the game on Sunday is the first proper game of the new season and so we try to be as good prepared as possible.

As Klopp alluded to there, Xherdan Shaqiri (£6.5m) and Naby Keita (£6.0m) will also be involved after injury and international duty, although Sadio Mane (£11.5m) won’t return to training until next week.

Formation Experiment

Sunday’s game saw the continuation of the 4-1-4-1 experiment, with Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain (£6.5m) and Georginio Wijnaldum (£5.5m) stationed on the flanks either side of lone striker Divock Origi (£5.5m).

It is fair to say Liverpool lacked potency in attack as a result, with the relative success story of the 2-2 draw with Sporting put into some context.

Origi couldn’t really make the ball stick up front and wasted a great chance early on when flicking an Andrew Robertson (£7.0m) cross wide.

These three players, of course, are placeholders for Mane, Salah and Firmino in the short term but should the latter two be match-fit for Norwich a week on Friday, it may be that Wijnaldum – rather than Origi – gets the nod to fill in for Mane in Gameweek 1.

Defensive Wobbles

While the front three were makeshift, Liverpool’s backline – except for goalkeeper Simon Mignolet (£4.5m) – has been at full-strength in the last two matches.

With Fabinho (£5.5m) stationed in front of the back four and Jordan Henderson (£5.5m) and James Milner (£5.5m) playing centrally in advance of the Brazilian, there was an argument to say that Liverpool’s defence was about as strong as it could possibly get against Napoli – although that would overlook the influence of Alisson and how effective Liverpool’s first-choice attacking trio is in pressing from the front.

There’ll be a legitimate concern in the Fantasy community that the Reds have now shipped five goals over their last two pre-season friendlies and ten in their last four.

While results over the summer can be ultimately meaningless when the proper business starts in August, Sunday’s 3-0 defeat to Napoli provided food for thought for those considering a double-up or more on the Liverpool defence.

Many punters would justifiably argue that Trent Alexander-Arnold (£7.0m) is the best attacking right-back in the Premier League but the England international occasionally flatters to deceive at the other end of the pitch and all three of Napoli’s goals came from Liverpool’s right flank.

Lorenzo Insigne ran Alexander-Arnold ragged down Napoli’s left and had a hand in all three goals, although the Liverpool full-back wasn’t given much help by Oxlade-Chamberlain in front of him and Joel Matip (£5.5m) deserves some flak for backing off Insigne for Napoli’s first goal.

Klopp said:

We just conceded two simple goals, each ball we lost was pretty much a proper counter-attack. Napoli are good in that, but you have to defend that obviously better or you have to keep the ball or you have to have a better formation. Pretty much you need to have everything better than we had in these situations and they had more chances.

The good news is that Liverpool’s opening eight Premier League fixtures are fairly favourable and they won’t come up against a calibre of player like Insigne on too many occasions throughout 2019/20.

Nor will they likely have to do as much defending in the first few Gameweeks of this season as they have done in their four most-recent pre-season games against top-quality opposition in the form of Dortmund, Sevilla, Sporting and Napoli.

That, in turn, means that the likes of Alexander-Arnold and Robertson will be free to spend a lot more time at the other end of the pitch, where they plundered a combined 26 attacking returns between them in 2018/19.

It may simply take a few games for Liverpool’s watertight backline of last season to find their feet again but that might be enough to deter some Fantasy managers from a double-up or triple-up on the Reds’ defence in the first few Gameweeks of the season, despite the appealing fixture schedule.

Liverpool XI (4-1-4-1): Mignolet, Alexander-Arnold (Hoever 73′), Matip (Lovren 62′), Van Dijk (Van den Berg 79′), Robertson (Gomez 73′), Fabinho (Duncan 79′), Wijnaldum (Elliott 79′), Henderson (Lallana 62′), Milner (Lewis 79′), Oxlade-Chamberlain (Wilson 62′), Origi (Brewster 62′).

Arsenal 1-2 Lyon

• Goal: Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (£11.0m)
• Assist: Henrikh Mkhitaryan (£7.0m)

Unai Emery has suggested that the injury that led to Alexandre Lacazette’s (£9.5m) 13th-minute substitution in Sunday’s Emirates Cup defeat to Lyon is not too serious.

Lacazette limped from the field of play and was later seen wearing a protective boot but Emery said the withdrawal was hopefully just precautionary:

We are thinking it’s not important, he decided with the doctor and with me that it is better to take no more risk. He tried to continue playing but I think it was better in the pre-season to take patience.

The doctor said to me he is going to check tomorrow but the thinking is that it is not important. It’s in his ankle, a sprained ankle. He will probably be assessed over the next few days – but it’s not serious.

Aubameyang Central

Lacazette’s early substitution meant that there was a change of role for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (£11.0m), who had begun Sunday’s match on the right wing of a 4-2-3-1.

Aubameyang has impressed on the flank against Bayern Munich and Real Madrid this summer but there will be plenty owners of the Gabon international who prefer the premium FPL forward to be playing as a bona fide striker rather than out wide.

It was indeed Aubameyang who grabbed Arsenal’s only goal of the match on Sunday when he expertly redirected a fierce Henrikh Mkhitaryan (£7.0m) cross from the right flank past Anthony Lopes.

The Gabonese striker also hit the post late on.

Emery has largely favoured a 4-2-3-1 in pre-season, however, so the prospects of Aubameyang featuring centrally from Gameweek 1 onwards may hinge on Lacazette’s availability.

Formation Watch

That said, Emery used the second half of Sunday’s defeat to experiment with a different system.

From Lacazette’s departure up until half-time, Aubameyang led the line and was supported by an attacking midfield trio of Mkhitaryan, substitute Reiss Nelson and – playing in more of an advanced, ‘number ten’ role – Joe Willock.

After the break, Willock dropped back into central midfield alongside Granit Xhaka (£5.5m), while Aubameyang was joined up front by Eddie Nketiah (£4.5m) in a 4-4-2.

The formation may well be one Emery is again considering in order to get Lacazette and Aubameyang playing in tandem up front, although second-guessing the Arsenal boss’s tactics was nigh-on impossible in 2018/19.

Nketiah had several chances to extend the Gunners’ lead in the second half but couldn’t convert, although the Gunners’ young attackers dovetailed well with Aubameyang and Mkhitaryan throughout.

Absences Explained

It wasn’t a massive shock to see Mesut Ozil (£7.5m) and Sead Kolasinac (£5.5m) missing from the Arsenal squad list after the pair were caught up in an attempted car-jacking at the end of last week.

Emery said of the pair’s absence:

It’s not a good moment to play because their mind is not now 100 per cent. It’s a very personal circumstance and the most important thing now is that they can feel good, they can feel safe, they can feel calm with their family.

They came this morning but I spoke to them and decided it was best to continue their resting with their families and wait for a few days to hopefully come and start normally with the team. We are going to see each day. Tomorrow we are going to check again how they are. This morning they came here but weren’t ready to play the match.

Defending the Defence

The team with the fewest away clean sheets in the Premier League last season haven’t yet bolstered their defence over the summer and the Arsenal backline predictably looked suspect on occasion on Sunday.

Moussa Dembele escaped centre-back Calum Chambers (£4.5m) to nod Lyon level before breaching the offside trap to score the winner in the 75th minute.

Emery backed his defence after full-time, however, saying:

Obviously the result is 1-2, we lost. But I must say, in the first half I think we defended well. In the first half, we were in very good positioning, defensively we didn’t struggle and offensively we created chances. We controlled the game. In general, in the first half, I think the team worked like we want to, to take the way forward.

In the second half, maybe we lost a little bit of comfortability. In the second half, we could have felt more comfortable in the pitch but this comfortability was not possible. We were thinking maybe because we are also sometimes creating chances, we are going to win at 1-0. But really it was a surprise. They arrived in the second half for two or three times and they scored.

Defensively, I think we are doing a good balance but in the second half we lost that a little. We are going to watch, work and take more decisions about that.

Arsenal XI (4-2-3-1): Leno, Maitland-Niles (Jenkinson 76′), Chambers (Mustafi 69′), Sokratis, Monreal (Medley 86′), Xhaka, Guendouzi (Nketiah 46′), Mkhitaryan (Martinelli 69′), Willock (Ceballos 69′), Aubameyang (Burton 86′), Lacazette (Nelson 13′, John-Jules 76′).

Reading 3-4 Chelsea

• Goals: Ross Barkley (£6.0m), Kenedy (£5.5m), Mason Mount (£6.0m) x2
• Assists: Olivier Giroud (£7.0m), Marcos Alonso (£6.5m), Tammy Abraham (£7.0m), Michy Batshuayi (£7.0m)

Fantasy managers are not much further forward in knowing what Frank Lampard’s preferred formation and personnel will be in Gameweek 1.

The new Chelsea boss used 22 different players at Reading on Sunday and changed formation at the break, ditching the 4-2-3-1 in favour of a 4-4-2.

Speaking after the match, Lampard said:

I wouldn’t say I’ve made decisions yet in terms of selection for those early games or what the squad looks like because that’s a line and I don’t want to draw that line just yet.

There’s not a player who hasn’t pushed themselves and shown me everything but these are decisions I have to make. They’re not absolutely clear decisions but I’ll make them in due course.

Injury Update

Lampard also brought us up to speed on the Blues’ injury situation, with several of their assets currently flagged in FPL.

Asked about N’Golo Kante (£5.0m), Lampard said:

The signs are good. It was certainly the right decision for him to come home early from Japan and get the treatment he had.

He’s dipped into training with us over the last couple of days and I expect him to be training through this week to the point that he can be fully involved at the start of next week. There’s a lot more he needs to do physically without us but we’re hopeful.

While Kante may well be ready for the trip to Manchester United a week on Sunday, Callum Hudson-Odoi (£6.0m) is looking less likely to be available for Chelsea’s Premier League curtain-raiser.

Asked about the young winger, the Chelsea boss said:

He’s not training with us yet but the injury is coming on ahead of schedule. There will be a period for Callum where his injury is fine but then he needs to get fit to play in the team because it’s going to be very demanding with the way I want to play from front to back.

He’s not far away and I know he’s done everything throughout the summer with our medical team to get back quickly.

Hudson-Odoi and Willian (£7.0m) may be vying for one spot on the left wing when fully fit but Lampard says he wants both players to sign new contracts and stay in west London.

The Blues’ head coach added:

Willian and Callum are both players I want in my squad. We’ve made some good moves this pre-season with Mason Mount and Ruben Loftus-Cheek signing new contracts, two young players nailed down and the club are always trying to do that.

From a football sense, I’ve made my ideas very clear. I’m working very closely with Marina [Granovskaia] and the board because these are two players that we want to stay for sure.

Mount v Barkley

Mason Mount and Ross Barkley (both £6.0m) were responsible for three of Chelsea’s four goals on Sunday but may well be competing for one starting spot come August 11.

Barkley curled in an excellent free-kick after a foul on Olivier Giroud (£7.0m) but Mount went one better after half-time, finishing from a deflected Tammy Abraham (£7.0m) pass and then tapping in when Michy Batshuayi (£7.0m) had intercepted a poor kick out from Reading goalkeeper Sam Walker.

Barkley and Mount have briefly shared pitch-time in both a 4-2-3-1 and 4-4-2 diamond this summer but the last two friendlies have seen them kept apart in separate line-ups and Lampard hinted in his post-match comments that there could be a straight fight between the pair ahead:

You look at the goals, Ross and Mason with his two goals as well. They’re two young players, Mason is a little bit younger, but they are vying for similar positions which is great. I want competition in midfield and there were good performances all over the pitch.

Mount and Barkley are likely to be tussling for the ‘number ten’ role in whichever of the two formations Lampard settles on and the pair have had excellent pre-seasons so far, with both instrumental either side of half-time on Sunday.

The midfield picture is further complicated given that Jorginho (£5.0m) and Mateo Kovacic (£5.5m) have quietly impressed further back, while Christian Pulisic (£7.5m) is still in the early stages of being bedded in and we are yet to even see Kante, Willian, Hudson-Odoi and Ruben Loftus-Cheek (£6.5m) under their new boss.

Pedro (£7.0m), meanwhile, was used as the tip of the diamond in the second half against Reading.

Competition Up Front

Giroud, Batshuayi and Abraham were all handed 45 minutes to impress on Sunday and there isn’t a great deal to separate this trio, who are all available for £7.0m in FPL.

Giroud was given the lone striker’s role in the 4-2-3-1 set-up in the first half, with Batshuayi and Abraham paired together after the break.

All three FPL forwards were involved in a Chelsea goal at Reading, although there wasn’t much to report regarding goal threat of their own: Rotation’s Alter Ego and Twisted Saltergater both suggesting that Abraham was the most effective of the three and that Giroud doesn’t look a natural fit for Lampard’s high-energy approach.

Defensive Decisions

Chelsea didn’t convince at the back in Berkshire and were exposed against a side that scraped Championship survival in 2018/19.

Kurt Zouma (£5.0m) was given the nod alongside David Luiz (£6.0m) in Chelsea’s stronger-looking second-half team but was part of a defence that conceded twice after the break, so it remains too early to say whether he or Andreas Christensen (£5.0m) will be handed the role alongside Luiz at Old Trafford in Gameweek 1.

Marcos Alonso (£6.5m) was his usual self: bombing forward to support the visitors’ attack and registering an assist for Kenedy’s (£5.5m) fortuitous goal but leaving plenty of space in behind him for the hosts to exploit.

The battle between Alonso and Emerson Palmieri (£5.5m) is one that will perhaps drag on as it did towards the back-end of 2018/19 but Cesar Azpilicueta (£6.0m), limited as he is in attack, looks to now be Lampard’s first choice at right-back after a brief stint at centre-half earlier in the month.

Chelsea first-half XI (4-2-3-1): Caballero, Zappacosta, Christensen, Tomori, Alonso, Drinkwater, Bakayoko, Kenedy, Barkley, Pulisic, Giroud.
Chelsea second-half XI (4-4-2): Caballero (Cumming 63′), Azpilicueta, Zouma, David Luiz, Emerson, Pedro, Jorginho, Kovacic, Mount, Abraham, Batshuayi.

Feyenoord 1-3 Southampton

• Goals: Che Adams (£6.0m), Maya Yoshida (£4.5m), Sofiane Boufal
• Assists: James Ward-Prowse (£6.0m), Stuart Armstrong (£5.5m)

Southampton made it ten goals in three pre-season games after coming out on top in an end-to-end match in Rotterdam.

The Saints’ high, aggressive press repeatedly caused Feyenoord problems early on, with Che Adams (£6.0m) scoring his third Southampton goal when slide tackling defender Sven van Beek in the hosts’ box after just six minutes.

Nathan Redmond (£6.5m), supporting Adams and Danny Ings (£6.0m) in attack, almost repeated the trick soon after when dispossessing home goalkeeper Kenneth Vermeer but couldn’t quite apply the finishing touch to double the Saints’ lead.

Southampton were a menace up front but looked frail at the back, with Ralph Hasenhuttl opting for a three-man central defence and wing-backs in the first half.

Angus Gunn and Alex McCarthy (both £4.5m) were busy either side of half-time, with Orkun Kökcü equalising for the hosts midway through the first half.

Maya Yoshida (£4.5m) restored Southampton’s lead before the break, bundling the ball over the line after James Ward-Prowse‘s (£6.0m) direct free-kick attempt had been blocked.

Hasenhuttl made ten changes at the interval and continued his tactical experimentation by switching to a 4-2-2-2.

The Saints were more defensively solid after the break and perhaps posed less threat in attack as a result, although forgotten man Sofiane Boufal rounded off the scoring late on when calmly finishing off a pass from Stuart Armstrong (£5.5m).

Hasenhuttl said of the game:

I think the pressing was very good in the first half. We won a lot of balls and they gave us the chance to do so. On the other hand, we gave a few chances away because deep defending and long balls we didn’t defend very well. Finally, two good goals. We could have scored more often because we had a lot of chances in the first half.

Second half, it was a different shape with the younger guys. I think what they can show they showed me. We haven’t been as dominant as in the first half sometimes but it was a good test, I saw a lot of good things and a few bad things which is ok.

Oriel Romeu (£4.5m) and Jack Stephens (£4.5m) sat this game out with minor injuries, while Moussa Djenepo (£5.5m) wasn’t involved after only just returning from a post-Africa Cup of Nations breather.

Southampton XI (3-4-1-2): Gunn (McCarthy 46′), Yoshida (Hoedt 46′), Vestergaard, Bednarek (Obafemi 46′), Valery (Soares 46′), Hojbjerg (Smallbone 46′), Ward-Prowse (Reed 46′), Bertrand (Vokins 46′), Redmond (Boufal 46′), Adams (Armstrong 46′), Ings (Long 46′).

The original Fantasy League game is back for the 2019/20 season – PLAY HERE!