It’s hard to shake the feeling that Liverpool are trying to be a high press monster again without really having the right pieces for it, especially when you look at Isak leading the line.
Isak Up Top: Sofa In A Sprint Race
With some of these new signings, the idea of us flying around like peak heavy metal Liverpool just doesn’t quite add up. Sticking Isak up front and asking him to spearhead a relentless press feels all wrong. Watching him try to join the high press is like watching a sofa try to run a marathon. You’re mainly waiting for someone to drag it off the pitch, and at the moment that’s exactly what seems to be happening.
He’s clearly a good player, technically tidy, knows where the goal is, but a pressing monster? Nowhere near. At times he looks more like a traffic cone in a Liverpool shirt, part of the scenery rather than a trigger for anything. You hardly even hear his name when we try to squeeze teams high up. If your number nine isn’t setting the tone off the ball, the whole press starts to sag behind him.
That’s where the confusion kicks in. You look at the profile, the way we say we want to play, then you look at the reality on the pitch, and it just doesn’t quite fit together in your head.
Wirtz The Wizard In A League Of Giants
Then there’s Florian Wirtz. Lovely footballer, outrageous first touch, can glide away from people like Legolas dancing through a forest. You can see the vision, the eye for a pass, the flair in tight spaces. On the ball, he looks like he’s stepped out of a different sport.
The problem is, this league is brutal. Half the players look about sixteen foot tall and built like bouncers, and Wirtz gets bounced off it more often than you’d like. He’ll take a gorgeous touch, roll a man, then get absolutely walloped by the next one flying in. If the rest of the team aren’t on the same wavelength, his talent gets smothered by the chaos around him.
It doesn’t help when it feels like every other Liverpool player is mentally somewhere else, playing Call of Duty or Crash Bandicoot. You need sharp movement, options, and intensity around a creative player like that. Without it, he’s just producing pretty touches in areas that don’t really hurt anyone.
Arne Slot’s Big Jigsaw
All of this leaves a big question hanging over the whole project: how is Arne Slot supposed to make it all click? From the outside, it feels like one of those massive jigsaws where the pieces are from three different boxes. You can see the quality, but not the picture.
Truth is, I wouldn’t have a clue what to do in his shoes. Trying to build a cohesive press with a centre forward who doesn’t really lead it and a lightweight creator who needs protection is not straightforward in the Premier League. It’s a proper tactical headache.
At the same time, there has to be a bit of patience. Slot clearly isn’t short of ideas, and you can tell he’s trying his best to shape something new out of what he’s got. The hope is that with time on the training ground, a clearer structure, and a few tweaks to roles, these players start to look less like scattered furniture and more like a proper Liverpool side again.
For now, though, it’s fair to say the high press dream and the actual squad on the pitch don’t quite look like they belong to the same plan.
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