Arne Slot says Liverpool’s opponents always change tactics. Is he right – and does it matter?

After beating Barnsley in the FA Cup last month, Arne Slot admitted that his approach to analysing opponents might need a rethink.

“We’ve played 30 games this season and I’d say 28 of my pre-match meetings, I could just throw in the bin,” he said in a press conference, highlighting the extent to which he feels teams have altered their approach when lining up against Liverpool.

For context — and this is important — Slot was not suggesting that opponents should roll over and play into Liverpool’s hands. Against Barnsley, for example, he acknowledged that he also would have adopted defensive tactics in their position.

His broader point, however, centred on the growing difficulty of predicting how teams will line up, given the frequency of unexpected system and formation changes. Opponents have made very obvious alterations, whether by design or necessity, when facing Liverpool this season and their success rate has been far greater than in Slot’s first year at the club.

At various stages of the campaign, Liverpool have struggled to break down teams set up in a low block. They are looking vulnerable in transition, especially against teams playing more direct passes. They’ve conceded many late goals and have lost important set-piece battles, although Slot will hope Wednesday’s impressive 1-0 win at Sunderland could tee up a better end to the season.

So, how much does the way opponents adapt their style against Liverpool really matter? And what are Slot’s side doing to combat the approach?

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Teams mixing up their tactics is not an entirely new issue for Slot. In December 2024, after a scrappy 1-0 win away at Girona in the Champions League, he told reporters: “So many times this season, when a team plays us, they do something different than they do in their other games.”

Bayer Leverkusen, then coached by Xabi Alonso, were just one example as they played without a No 9 and moved striker Victor Boniface into a wide position — for what Slot thought was the first time in his career — to help pack out the midfield. Liverpool were rampant and won 4-0.

Back then, the Premier League champions-elect looked imperious. This season, there’s a clear difference, and that’s made the pre-match opposition analysis meeting tricky.

“(In Europe) the teams we face are mainly the same as in their other games, whereas in the Premier League… they completely change their style,” Slot told reporters last month.

Liverpool have struggled to break down teams who sit back for long periods or set up in a low block. That was clear early in the season when a stoppage-time penalty was needed to see off Burnley, who sat considerably deeper than in their previous games and almost emerged with a hard-fought point.

Here you can see the change in Burnley’s approach from earlier games against Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United. They are set up in a strict 5-4-1 defensive shape against Liverpool…

… whereas at Old Trafford a fortnight earlier, they showed more enterprise by pushing players higher up the pitch.

They were also pressing United when they had possession in their own box…

… but against Liverpool, they were happy to sit back and let Liverpool play out.

Fulham, perhaps, provided the biggest surprise when they set up with a five-man defence in the 2-2 draw at Craven Cottage last month. Slot would have shown his team clips of their previous setup, which included a flat back four against Manchester City and Arsenal.

Against Liverpool, Fulham dropped another man into defence to combat Liverpool’s attack and secured a point (although they did need a stunning stoppage-time strike from Harrison Reed).

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Predicting what opponents are likely to do has always been one of Slot’s strengths. “His tactics were unbelievable,” Myron Boadu, Slot’s former striker at AZ, told The Athletic last year. “Everything we talked about during the week would happen in the game.”

Players at Liverpool saw that during his first season, as Slot was able to pick apart teams with ease and successfully see out matches through clever in-game management, but this season has been a struggle as opponents have proved adept at sucking the intensity out of games.

Slot has worked on small details from game to game in an attempt to make a difference, including trying to win the ball higher up the pitch to increase the intensity. That was notable against Sunderland on Wednesday as Liverpool’s centre-backs pushed up to squeeze the defence into further mistakes, and crucially avoided any lapses in concentration at the other end.

The most important factor against opponents such as Sunderland is to win one-vs-one battles across the pitch — something Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has regularly mentioned when his side have faced teams ‘parking the bus’ in previous years. Slot is still working on ways to find that magic formula, even though they have been creating more chances in recent weeks.

Another weakness opponents have exploited is their struggle to deal with long balls. Manchester United won at Anfield in October after attempting 75 ‘long passes’ (defined by Opta as a pass of 32-plus metres without being a switch of play), the third most in any Premier League game this season. Crystal Palace and Sunderland (at Anfield) also had joy as they claimed points off Liverpool with similar tactics.

When Nottingham Forest won at Anfield, their now former manager Sean Dyche said: “We changed the tactical style massively. We didn’t pass out, we went long because they were going to press the life out of us.”

Four Liverpool games feature in the top 10 fixtures for long balls attempted in the Premier League this season.

It is Slot’s job to anticipate how some of this might unfold, and even if he feels the pre-match opposition analysis meetings should be “in the bin”, there’s no reason he can’t find the same solutions as in his first season.

There have been some mitigating circumstances, including the number of injuries and the squad’s transformation. Rival teams have also strengthened and improved defensively, which has shifted some of the focus away from what opponents had been doing.

“Only once or twice did the team do what they did the 20 weeks before, and that was Arsenal,” said Slot last month.

Analysis meetings have continued and remain a key part of preparation for games. Slot and his staff usually arrange three pre-game meetings: one on the opponent, another on set pieces, and one focusing on a specific game plan. They range in length and take place either at the training ground or in accommodation before games. The final meeting always ends on a positive note and is based on Liverpool’s strengths, rather than opponents’ weaknesses.

Depending on the opponent and the amount of time to prepare, Slot watches matches of upcoming opponents either live or on repeat, sometimes at home. The details stick: in preparing for the game against Manchester City, he observed that Newcastle United deployed significantly fewer long balls against Guardiola’s side than they had in their 4–1 defeat against Liverpool.

Slot seems to take more pride in out-thinking a manager who plays in a specific way, rather than grinding down a defensive plan (although he knows to be successful again at Liverpool, he’ll need to master both). Leaving aside this season’s games with City, his record in ‘big’ games remains strong: taking four points against Arsenal, defeating Real Madrid (for a second successive season) and becoming the first team in over three years to beat Inter at San Siro in the Champions League. Becoming the first team to beat Sunderland at the Stadium of Light in the Premier League this season was another positive.

Asked by The Athletic last month whether it’s easier to play against attack-minded teams, Slot replied: “That depends because if you face low blocks, you have the ball a lot, so you assume you win the game.

“That would be normal for us if you compare the chances we create and the chances we concede, but because of multiple reasons this season, we were not able.”

Slot needs to find an answer to that conundrum if he is to salvage something from this Premier League season.