Everybody’s done it. The door looks heavy or stiff, so you give it an almighty shove, only to find the expected resistance isn’t there so you tumble through, falling flat on your face. Erik ten Hag’s genius has been to take an everyday pratfall and turn it into a philosophy.
On Sunday Liverpool, astonishingly, fell victim to the trick for the second time in three weeks. The first time put them out of the Cup; this second, although a draw rather than a defeat, cost them leadership of the league.
It made very little sense, but then football sometimes doesn’t. The Manchester United equaliser was the perfect encapsulation of that: Bruno Fernandes 45 yards out, clipping his finish over Caoimhín Kelleher with United’s first shot of the game, five minutes after half-time. Liverpool had 17 chances before that, and yet the score was 1-1.
Ten Hag had said after last week’s draw against Brentford, an equally one-sided game, that he wasn’t bothered how many shots his side conceded so long as they get results. For a coach so focused on the process it was a remarkable statement. Lay people may think there is some correlation between how many shots a team has and how many goals they score, but Ten Hag is way beyond that. Liverpool had 87 shots in three games against United this season and didn’t win any of them.
Since systematisation took hold in the mid-60s, football has always been about space, but the orthodoxy has always been that it was about creating it for yourself and denying it to the opposition. But Ten Hag has disrupted all that. He’s through the looking-glass. What, he has asked, if you give the opposition space? Elite-level players are used to being put under pressure, they’re used to being closed down, they’re used to
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