Liverpool Football Club and the 'Up-Back-Through'

Arne Slot’s side are showing a lot of the present with a little bit of the past heading into the new season

Patterns of Play

During pre-season Arne Slot’s Liverpool side have been compared to Roberto De Zerbi’s style of build-up play through the thirds of the pitch.

You will typically see a more methodical style of passing in the first third, with some wall passes into midfield allowing you to carry the ball through the middle third of the pitch. Your full backs and wingers will alternate underlaps/overlaps in the final third to drag opposition centre-backs and full backs into areas they don’t like so you can create space for your forwards.

This is oversimplifying things, I know. But the point of this piece is to discuss Liverpool’s more direct play in pre-season.

Anfield was littered with “ooh’s” and “ahh’s” on Sunday as Liverpool charged to a 3-0 lead at half time against Sevilla. The football was great and although there isn’t a huge departure from what we’re used to in terms of intensity , the older crowd were treated to something they would have seen that the younger crowd are only being introduced to.

Heading into half time, Alisson Becker played a long ball “Up” to Mo Salah. The Egyptian used his strength to hold off Ramon Martinez and play a pass “Back” to Diogo Jota who could then thread a “Through ball” for the deep running Dominik Szoboszlai to get in behind the Sevilla defence and allow Luis Diaz a tap-in for Liverpool’s third.

Source: Liverpool FC - YouTube

You may think that “Direct” and “Methodical” build-up are different styles of play and so they won’t share the same characteristics. In most cases this may be true but not here…

I mentioned wall passing beforehand when talking about methodical build-up. Wall passing is essentially playing a pass into a player who ordinarily will have their back to goal, regardless of the area of the pitch they are in. They then lay the ball off first-time for you to run onto - as if you’re passing at a wall.

It’s a momentum-based style of play to progress you to the opponent’s goal – Vertical pass, ball back, take in-stride and run-on/pass forward.

The ‘Up-Back-Through’ is a similar concept. You play a ball “Up” to, ordinarily the striker, he plays a ball “Back” to a midfield player and they then play a “Through-ball” to a winger or even the striker themselves when they turn and run in-behind the opposition defence.

Yes, I did make this diagram in MS Word. Go ahead, JUDGE ME.

A Little Bit of the Past

On commentary, John Bradley described Mo Salah’s goal against Arsenal in pre-season as being, “The archetypal Liverpool goal. The goal we’ve seen so many times down the years.” It felt this way to me as well – A supporter who grew up on LFC TV compilations of Ian Rush goals from the 80s.

The same rule applies then as it did now, ‘Up’ to the big man, ‘Back’ to the midfielder/second striker and ‘Through’ to a runner.

Although the examples I’ve shown are the most common, they are also the most basic. The ‘Up-Back-Through’ can come in different shapes and sizes, even in shorter build-up play.

Here is a goal Rush scored against Manchester United where Liverpool play what you may call a staggered ‘Up-Back-Through’ to try and move United player’s out of position centrally and move the ball wide afterwards. When Kevin MacDonald’s ‘Up’ pass finds (I think) Ronnie Whelan, Ian Rush finds a way to receive Whelan’s pass and create his own little ‘Back-Through’, with Dalglish providing as always

The Future

Whether or not this yields the number of results required for Liverpool to lift a shiny thing next season or the seasons to come, is anybody’s guess.

The signs here however are that Liverpool are merging patterns of play when it comes to triangles and runners from midfield & wide to create different ways in which they progress the play towards the oppositions goal.

Sometimes it’s direct, sometimes it takes more passes.

This is good in my opinion as it provides variation to Liverpool’s play whilst also allowing the players to repeatedly act upon the same principles.

Given the mix of styles in the squad from the running power of players such as Szoboszlai, Diaz, Jota, Nunez, Salah, Gravenberch and Jones, to the passing of Elliot, Salah, MacAllister and Trent, these attacking principles appear to be the most pragmatic approach to getting goals from a Head Coach implementing his specific style of play.

Liverpool shouldn’t be far off next season but there must surely be teething problems afoot in the next six months or so. It happens to all teams under a new manager. One thing that I do believe though, is that the past and present are indicative that the future is something to look forward to.