Liverpool Football Formation

Lineup (4-2-3-1)

The emphasis from our team will be to control the midfield and use pace as a threat. Getting in behind the defenders is something which would be a fairly important objective.

In their defense, that comprises of the likes of

Alves-Terry-Sokratis-F.Luis

one feels that you do end up finding a lot of space to move into around the fullback area especially on the counter and since Alves will stretch forward and Terry or Sokratis will be more comfortable down deeper as a defensive line, there will be space in between center back and fullback. This is the space we will need to exploit.

Hence, both our wingers are speed demons, more likely to drift in even though they are out and out wingers who have an eye for a cross as well.

Iniesta gets to control the game, but we are wary of Busquets being posted to take Iniesta out of the game which is why Iniesta will often drift wide to double up with our wingers taking Busquets for a walk with him leaving their remaining midfielder to take care of Bastian who will play his natural game.

De Rossi will dictate play from deep.

Marcelo will play his natural game. His experience in tight situations with Lallana should help him take Lallana on with relative ease, he also has a lot of defensive work to bank upon from Sterling in this time as well.

Defensively Schweinsteiger and De Rossi will try to help out their fullbacks as much as possible but will also maintain positional discipline. It helps that genuine width will come from their fullbacks and by then our wingers will back back down defending.

Hazard-Luis vs Lahm-Aubemeyang will be interesting to say the least.

The sort of team we have put out this time can play both counter attacking football as well as the possession based game. A fine balance of the two will happen as we foresee the game to be played evenly with phases where opposition are controlling the game and those when we are.

The idea is to be disciplined and clinical when we are controlling the game.

Since their front four will have great movement between themselves our defensive minded players will keep compact and not allow them to break our positional discipline, this will make it harder for them to break us down.

But on the counter we do have more pace, guile and power than them and we hope to utilize that to the fullest.

Subs:

This is the sort of game where a draw suits us just fine. Hence if we are drawing towards the latter part of the second half, we will become more compact and look to break with power and pace.

They are the team that needs the win badly otherwise we qualify in their place so we will be patient enough to see them opening up before we push to take advantage of it.

IF losing

There will come a point when the opposition tries to shut the game out by getting another central player in. Our response has to be appropriate.

We will need to control the game. Thus possession will be important.

So IF they call for a defensive change or 70 mins are up with us losing, whichever comes first, we will get:

Fabregas On Aubemeyang off

We shift to a 4-4-2 diamond

with Sterling behind Iniesta and Lewandowski.
Fabregas as the left CM basti as the right CM and De Rossi as the deep lying enforcer.

With Sterling up against Busquets it will give Sergio something new to deal with and it might just be enough to take advantage of a tiring player.

Our box 2 box players will support the fullbacks defensively allowing Lewa-Iniesta-Sterling to use their movement to their fullest.

If Winning:

We become more compact and more disciplined on the ball as well, make them work for possession and at the same time cut out spaces in between our midfield and defense as per the situation's demand to ensure they can't run in behind us and just lob a pass for their forwards. Aerially we are better equipped so it shouldn't bother us much.

We don't change much because our players can run the 90 minutes and more. They are well conditioned.