Arne Slot tried something in Liverpool’s friendly against Stoke that nobody has seen before
Pre-season is generally the best time for managers and coaches to indulge in experimentation, and that’s exactly what Arne Slot was doing today.
The fixtures played prior to the start of the campaign proper allow for unfamiliar line-ups and tactics to be tested without the pressure of needing a result, with scope for trying out new ideas lessened considerably when the outcome has consequences.
This afternoon, Liverpool took on Stoke City in a behind-closed-doors friendly at the AXA Training Centre and ran out 5-0 winners, with Darwin Nunez helping himself to a hat-trick as Rio Ngumoha and Federico Chiesa also got their names on the scoresheet.
Slot goes with strong starting XI but tries Szoboszlai in unfamiliar role
Slot fielded a strong starting line-up against the Potters, with Mo Salah, Virgil van Dijk, Andy Robertson and new signings Florian Wirtz and Giorgi Mamardashvili all included. Alexis Mac Allister was a high-profile omission as he continues his rehabilitation from a niggling injury.
Dominik Szoboszlai was another familiar name on the team sheet, but his role on the pitch was definitely of an experimental nature.
As per Ian Doyle of the Liverpool Echo, the Hungarian midfielder was ‘surprisingly’ utilised in a right-back berth, with Wirtz playing in the number 10 role ahead of an engine room axis of Curtis Jones and Trey Nyoni. As is often the case in pre-season friendlies, the entire team was changed around for the second half.
Slot right to use pre-season for such experimentation
Given the intense nature of modern-day football, it’s standard practice that players will be asked to cover several different roles and can be deployed in a position other than the one with which they’re most familiar.
However, for Slot to start with Szoboszlai at right-back was genuinely unprecedented – as per Transfermarkt, the 24-year-old has played in eight separate positions during his career, but never on the right-hand side of defence (or indeed anywhere across the backline).
It didn’t prevent the Hungarian from making a telling impact against Stoke, though, with Doyle documenting (via Liverpool Echo) that he supplied the assist for Nunez’s second goal with a cross and was also the intended recipient of a through ball from Wirtz in the move which led to the Uruguayan’s sixth-minute opener.
The right-back berth is set to be contested between Conor Bradley and new signing Jeremie Frimpong when the competitive season gets underway next month, but we saw last term that midfielders may need to be utilised in defence (e.g. Jones in the Merseyside derby at Anfield in April).
Could Szoboszlai do likewise at some point in the upcoming campaign? If so, it’d probably be only through necessity, but it did no harm whatsoever for Slot to experiment with our number 8 this afternoon when the final score was of no consequence.
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