Liverpool don’t play again until April 2 and, while the majority of Arne Slot‘s squad are on international duty, there is a lot for the head coach to work on.
The Reds lost all momentum with back-to-back defeats to PSG and Newcastle, with 17 days between the Carabao Cup final and the upcoming Merseyside derby leaving frustration to fester.
But with Liverpool still on course to win the Premier League the reality cannot be lost that this is an outstanding campaign for Slot and his players.
Nevertheless, the weeks between their loss at Wembley and the visit of Everton next Wednesday night should allow Slot and his staff plenty of time to consider their flaws and act.
Here are three things Liverpool can improve on during their time off and in the remainder of the season.
Set-pieces
Liverpool went public with their desire to appoint a specialist set-piece coach last summer, with adverts posted on LinkedIn and their official jobs portal.
But the failure to land Feyenoord analyst and technical advisor Etienne Reijnen – a former teammate and long-time colleague of Slot’s – saw the club park their search.
• READ: How Liverpool missed out on their No. 1 set-piece coach target
The assumption is that Reijnen will be approached again ahead of 2025/26, when it will be hoped that he will be eligible for a UK work permit.
Until then, though, it is clear that Liverpool are lacking in the set-piece department – regardless of the quality and invention of Mohamed Salah‘s well-worked goal from a corner routine in the recent 2-0 win over Man City.
Per WhoScored, Liverpool have only scored four set-piece goals in the Premier League this season – six percent of their overall tally – which is the second-worst total in the entire top flight.
Among the clubs around them are Leicester (four), Southampton (five), Ipswich (five) and Wolves (five), or in other words, the worst teams in the league.
Liverpool are 11th in terms of set-piece goals conceded in the league (seven) which is far from impressive either, and the decision to allow Alexis Mac Allister to mark 6’7″ Dan Burn in the Carabao Cup final shed light on a potentially dogmatic approach to zonal marking.
First-team individual development coach Aaron Briggs has taken the lead on set-pieces in the absence of a specialist coach, and while he deserves credit for the successes, it is also clear that there is plenty of room for improvement.
Hopefully, this long break between fixtures will see solutions found before they are put into action on the training pitch.
Finishing
This one is certainly hard to work on during this break given all but one of Slot’s senior forwards are on international duty – with Federico Chiesa in fact the only fit outfielder not called up.
But there is a clear need for improvement when it comes to the finishing of those attackers outside of Salah, Cody Gakpo and, perhaps on the evidence of his strike at Wembley, Chiesa himself.
• READ: Julian Alvarez, Alexander Isak and 4 more strikers Liverpool should target
Darwin Nunez, Diogo Jota and Luis Diaz have all been lacking in recent weeks and months and there is a sense that a mental break is required more than anything.
Speaking while on duty with Uruguay this month, Nunez admitted that his time away was an opportunity “forget a little about what’s happening” at Liverpool where “the ball doesn’t want to go in.”
“I’m happy thinking about the national team, enjoying every minute with it,” he explained.
“These are moments that one goes through in football, and as I said recently, I’m not someone who throws in the towel because they don’t play, but rather I’m going to keep working so I can play.”
After costly misses and an over-reliance on Salah to score and create, Liverpool need their centre-forwards to find their finishing touch again.
There was hopefully evidence of that at least in Diaz’s well-taken strike against Alisson in Colombia’s 2-1 loss to Brazil at the start of the break.
Chances for squad players
The frantic end to the Carabao Cup final highlighted arguably the biggest flaw in Slot’s management this season: his failure to trust those outside of his core group of players.
It was Harvey Elliott who won the ball in the middle of the pitch and threaded a perfect pass through, and it was Chiesa who had the sharpness and composure to time his run and finish for 2-1.
Wataru Endo went unused in the final – a clearly overworked Ryan Gravenberch playing 74 minutes before being replaced by Chiesa – but the Japan captain had been similarly influential in recent weeks.
None of those three players have clocked over 750 minutes on the pitch so far this season – Endo has 742, Elliott has 583 and Chiesa just 387.
Thirteen of Slot’s squad have played more minutes than those three players combined (1,712) and Gravenberch, Salah and Virgil van Dijk have all clocked more than double that.
• READ: Chiesa, Elliott and how to earn a bigger role for Slot’s Liverpool
Subtract minutes in the cups and Endo, Elliott and Chiesa have played a combined 698 minutes; an equivalent of under eight full games between three players.
While there is a virtue in Slot sticking with his key players – it has, after all, led them to within a maximum of five wins from the Premier League title – there have been points when his squad could have been managed better.
With only nine fixtures left to play it could be seen one of two ways for those on the fringes: either there will be even fewer opportunities with no cups or Europe to rotate in, or more with the increased time to impress in training.
Either way, it is a situation which Slot and his staff will surely learn from and, whether now or next season, there has to be an improved appreciation for the wider squad.
