Every football fan who’s conversant with Nuno’s style of playing understands how hard it is to break into his defense line, in situations like these, I expect two things from the Liverpool’s coach
First is, Diaz playing from the wing. When the opponents defense is strict, we obviously need a winger that can dribble and take on defenders from the sides, unfortunately we had gakpo on the left and salah on the right with Diaz, our best dribbler playing as a 9. How could we possibly disrupt a defense line when our best dribbler is playing upfront?
Second is, Slot’s inability to leverage on his players abilities to make key differences. Breaking the defense line was as cumbersome as it could get with passes being intercepted and constantly being cleared by the Nottingham defenders. In situations like this, all we needed was an alternative option (shooting from outside the box). Looking at the Liverpool bench yesterday was Harvey Elliot (one of the key specialists in long range shots) now the question is why not bring him in to try some of these shots?
But Diaz has been playing the 9 role for a while and has been converting? 🤔 yes! And rightly so. However playing a winger out of his natural position wouldn’t always work out, especially against tough defenders like Murillo, Anderson etc this explains why Diaz looked lost throughout the match with zero shot on target while Jota (an original 9) had 3 shots on target within his short spell on the pitch.
Again, if you think I might be wrong by saying Slot should’ve brought on Elliot, I would advice you rewatch some of his goals and you’ll realize most of them are fastastic jaw breaking long range shots. Jurgen leveraged on this advantage in the past and I think it’s fair that Slot starts adopting it too.
Image attached shows what my starting oineup could have looked like. Image is mine