Why Dominik Szoboszlai Is Already Liverpool's Most Important Player
Dominik Szoboszlai arrived at Liverpool with a reputation for being a flying, goal-scoring wide attacker. And yet, even in his earliest appearances for Jurgen Klopp's side, he's become one of the most dynamic and effective central midfielders in the Premier League. Adam Clery examines why, despite some criticism over his attacking output, he's become the central figure in the team looking far more dangerous than it has in recent seasons.
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00:00 Howdy doodly-do football friends, Adam Cleary from 442 here and we have to today talk about
00:09 Dominic Szabozlai.
00:10 Now you may have seen You've Got Eyes, he did this for the national side during the
00:14 international break and wow that's quite the hit.
00:17 And I saw, I won't name them, but I did see some actual journalists share that video with
00:22 the caption "If only he did this for Liverpool".
00:24 And I mean yes, fair enough, he hasn't scored that particular goal for Liverpool, that is
00:29 a fact, but if you do not think his impact at this club has been immediate and so, so
00:34 important to the team as a whole, then you've not been paying attention.
00:39 Dominic Szabozlai for Liverpool is amazing.
00:43 Alright, so the team that Jurgen Klopp has fielded has changed quite a lot, partially
00:48 due to some, let's call them unfortunate suspensions, but I think in an ideal world it kind of looks
00:53 a little bit like this.
00:54 Now prior to joining the club, Szabozlai played either wide left or wide right, usually in
00:59 a 4-3-3, so I think a lot of people expected him to take up a similar position here at
01:03 Liverpool, but no, he's been deployed as one of the eight in that midfield three.
01:07 And it's understandable why Jurgen Klopp would do that, like he's very intelligent on a pitch,
01:11 he's very athletic, he works very hard, he's got that kind of intensity Liverpool midfields
01:16 tend to have, so he's a good fit there, but that's not the main reason why this is where
01:21 he is.
01:22 Now if you just wind your minds all the way back to last season, you will remember that
01:25 both Arsenal and Man City, they were having a lot of success playing this fabled box midfield
01:30 thing.
01:31 I and every other football channel, we've done like a million videos on it, they're
01:34 all over the internet, I'll link one somewhere in the comments, but basically you pull a
01:37 defender out, they go into the midfield, you shuffle across and then you get a three, box,
01:42 three.
01:43 And last season with Trent Alexander-Arnold struggling with other teams targeting him
01:47 for a supposed defensive shortcoming, but him still being undeniably brilliant on the
01:51 ball, there was a lot of calls for Jurgen Klopp to revert to a box midfield by moving
01:56 Alexander-Arnold in to the centre and allowing the rest of the fence to shuffle across.
02:00 But he really, really, really resisted the temptation to do this, and the reason for
02:05 that is because while it is a great use of Alexander-Arnold, it is a staggering waste
02:11 of Mo Salah.
02:12 Like in the box midfield, people always focus on the box itself.
02:14 How interesting, how exciting to have four central midfielders, so you can have a numerical
02:18 advantage against teams with three central midfielders, but the only way it works in
02:22 an attacking sense, and what both Arsenal and City do, is they have their wide players
02:26 stay as wide as possible to allow these two eights to provide an attacking threat.
02:30 Like if you think about Arsenal last year, how impactful Erdegaard was in this position,
02:34 even Granit Xhaka started scoring loads of goals, while Saka over on the right held the
02:38 width to help create space.
02:39 And for Man City, on the other side, Grulic was always as far as he could be, getting
02:43 chalk on his boots and leaving room for De Bruyne and Gundogan to get up and support
02:47 Haaland.
02:48 Mo Salah remains one of the most dangerous right-sided attackers in world football, precisely
02:53 because he does not play in this area of the pitch, he plays in this area of the pitch,
02:58 the right-hand channel.
02:59 So Klopp didn't want to do this, because the box is really good, and it's good for Alexander-Arnold,
03:03 but just what is Mo Salah going to do stuck all the way out there?
03:06 It didn't work for them.
03:07 But hang on a minute, Adam, I thought this video was about Dominic Sapozlai, why haven't
03:10 you mentioned him in about two minutes?
03:12 Because he enables Liverpool to finally do this system.
03:16 Now, granted, we haven't seen it a whole lot this season, it's certainly not the only way
03:19 they play, but there have been a handful of times in the Premier League where we've seen
03:22 Liverpool building out from the back.
03:24 This way, Trent Alexander-Arnold comes all the way across into the centre of midfield,
03:28 he sits with McAllister there, and up front, Mo Salah is not completely wasted on the right-hand
03:34 side, because just like Alexander-Arnold, he too inverts and comes into a central space,
03:39 and Dominic Sapozlai, master of positional sense that he is, then moves across onto the
03:46 right-hand side.
03:47 So you build this three, box three, but now you have Mo Salah as pretty much the most
03:52 attacking eight you've ever seen, with Sapozlai filling in on the right.
03:58 And that is how Jurgen Klopp solved the riddle of giving Liverpool the box midfield while
04:02 not wasting his best player.
04:04 But the thing about Dominic Sapozlai, right, is this is like a fraction of his importance.
04:10 This is just one interesting thing he does.
04:12 When Liverpool aren't playing like that, they can also be found playing like this, which
04:15 is where the two wide players, they come inside, because that's where they do their best work,
04:19 and the width is created by the full-backs.
04:21 You will remember they've been doing it for years and years.
04:23 Alexander-Arnold, he gets into this space and he puts crosses in.
04:25 Robertson arrives late in the box.
04:27 It's just what they've always done.
04:29 And the reason this system started to break down while Liverpool went from being like
04:32 90-odd point title challenges to struggling to qualify for the Champions League is because
04:37 they lacked the intensity between these three players to effectively enact the high-pressing
04:42 system.
04:43 And the players, their job was always, don't worry about the dangerous stuff.
04:46 You've got five players ahead of you who are going to score a million goals.
04:50 You guys make sure other teams can't get out.
04:53 Turn the ball over.
04:54 Recover the ball.
04:56 And that's how Liverpool used to absolutely choke the life out of teams.
04:59 Like all the attacking threat was provided by these five, but behind them, you had Henderson,
05:02 you had Wijnaldum, you had Fabinho, you had players like that who were going to make sure
05:06 other teams could not get out.
05:08 When that ball got past that front line, their job was to hound other teams to death.
05:13 And to be blunt, Dominic Sapozlai has brought a level of intensity and doggedness that Liverpool
05:18 haven't had in this area of the pitch for a number of years now.
05:21 Like if we look at his FB ref profile here, you might be seeing all these red bits and
05:24 thinking, wow, he's not actually very good at recovering the ball.
05:27 But if you look at where all the big green bars are, he is recovering it in the attacking
05:33 third.
05:34 He is stopping people dribbling past him.
05:35 He is the best player in the league almost for blocking passing angles.
05:39 Like you can see from that, he's clearly not a defender.
05:42 He's not running all over the pitch trying to challenge players, but he knows his role
05:45 in that final third of the pitch is to stop other teams getting out.
05:48 And he's been so effective at doing it.
05:50 And when we talk about that athleticism he brings and how determined he is to recover
05:54 the ball, look at this absolutely brilliant map of all his ball recoveries for Liverpool
05:59 this season that was put on Twitter by Pranav.
06:02 58 ball recoveries, nearly seven and a half times per game.
06:05 He is identifying a straight pass or a loose touch, and he is going and collecting that
06:10 ball back.
06:11 And Liverpool, like I think he ranks about like eighth or ninth in the whole division
06:14 for it.
06:15 And all the players above him are defensive midfielders, players whose job it is specifically
06:20 to go and do that.
06:21 He's just doing that as a bonus to everything else he brings.
06:24 And you can see why he's so good at it and the build up to that penalty he won against
06:28 Brighton.
06:29 Now you can see here, this is his job.
06:30 He is tracking this player.
06:31 He is doing what he has been told to do, but there's a really quick shift in body direction.
06:35 He changes direction at the very last second as he recognises that this ball is going to
06:40 come through this area and he jumps into a much better position.
06:44 Now it isn't actually him who cuts out the ball here, yes, so it is technically a bad
06:47 example, but you can just see the instant flick of a switch in his brain when he realises,
06:52 oh no, this is where I need to be instead.
06:55 And because he's gone into that area, he then is the one who recovers it and he starts to
06:59 bring that up the field.
07:00 Like I know this is incredibly niche and weird, but I could just watch that snap change of
07:03 direction as his brain clicks into gear on loop forever, I think.
07:08 Alright, so he's positionally very important and he's brought a lot of intensity back to
07:12 the team and that's why he's so important is Adam.
07:15 That's why he's only got like zero assists and only one goal.
07:19 He's not going to be contributing too much in the final third because he's too busy running
07:23 around and making all these sacrificial movements and reading the game.
07:27 No, no.
07:28 I have seen people, intelligent people, questioning Dominic Sapozlai's output this season for
07:34 Liverpool.
07:35 He's got zero assists and it is only one goal in the Premier League.
07:38 But the reason for this is not because he doesn't do that or not because he's not good
07:42 at it.
07:43 These are his FB ref numbers in the Premier League this season, comparative to midfielders,
07:47 not to attackers for his contribution in the final third.
07:50 You can see he's playing the ball into the penalty area a lot.
07:53 His key passes, which is any pass that sort of leads directly to a shot, basically creates
07:57 a chance.
07:58 He's getting loads and loads of them.
07:59 These are his shot creating action numbers and at five per game, he is Liverpool's leading
08:04 player in terms of creating chances for his teammates.
08:08 Nobody is putting on more potential goals in that Liverpool team than Sapozlai is.
08:13 Now, I know some people hate any stat that starts with an X, but just for the purposes
08:17 of my argument here, let's go with it.
08:19 This is his number of expected assists in the Premier League this season and this is
08:23 the number of actual assists he's got this season.
08:26 It's a big fat zero.
08:27 And this is Mo Salah's number in that exact same stat.
08:30 You can see it is only fractionally higher than Sapozlai's and Mo Salah has four assists
08:36 this season.
08:37 So what gives?
08:38 Sometimes you've just got to use your eyes.
08:41 Sapozlai has created really good chances for his teammates and they just haven't f***ing
08:45 taken them.
08:46 Imagine in this situation, you are Dominic Sapozlai, you float a frankly lovely cross
08:49 to the back post and your teammate somehow hits the crossbar with it.
08:53 There's not really too much you can do there.
08:55 Is there not really too much more you can contribute to try and get your teammate a
08:58 goal?
08:59 All you can do is just remember that when you look at the numbers and see a big fat
09:02 zero next to your name.
09:03 Know that it's their fault and not yours.
09:05 So the assists will come in time because people can't keep missing chances like that all season
09:10 and the goals will come too because, well, we've already seen how well he strikes a ball
09:14 and that will get you quite a few goals over the course of a season on its own.
09:19 But the bottom line is, right now, if you've been watching Liverpool this season and you
09:22 think, golly gosh, don't they look a lot better than they did last year?
09:27 He's why.
09:28 None of this is to even touch upon just how good he is at carrying the ball up the pitch,
09:32 how important that's been to Liverpool, how easily he glides past other defenders, how
09:36 incisive his passing can be between the lines and why that's become a nightmare for the
09:40 teams to sort of try and defend around.
09:43 Or even how important it is when he drops slightly deeper in Liverpool's midfield to
09:46 sort of take the pressure off Alexis McAllister, how easy it is for him to dictate the tempo
09:51 of a game.
09:52 I could sit here, honestly, for an hour and talk to you about all the different things
09:57 he does, but I just thought they, his positional sense, his intensity and where the goals and
10:03 assists are, thought that was the most important.
10:05 But genuinely, I could do a seminar on him.
10:08 And who knows, maybe I will, just not right now.
10:11 Anyway, a little bit of housekeeping for you.
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10:19 And secondly, I'm going on holiday.
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10:53 And until next we meet, which yes, very sad, will be in about two weeks time.
10:57 I have been Adam Cleary.
10:58 I do hope you've enjoyed this.
10:59 Dominic Sirboz Light is mint.
11:01 Tell all your friends and I'll see you soon.
11:04 Goodbye.
11:05 Goodbye.
11:06 Goodbye, actually, because I am actually going.
11:08 So you can watch me walk off.
11:10 I'm going to the airport figuratively.
11:13 So.
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