Digging Deeper Into Liverpool’s 3-2 Loss to Brighton in Third Friendly of the 2024-25 Season

I’m going to be honest with you: I was enjoying this game while Liverpool were winning (especially in the first half) and could not really find it inside to be that upset when Liverpool lost. I like Brighton, and them being in Europe would I think be good for the sport. I think Kaoru Mitoma is quite tidy and will probably score if you give him effectively an open goal to aim at.

I did “watch” this game on my phone while dropping $600 at the vet for the second day running with a sick pet, which absolutely colored my priorities, but I do think we should relish being in a position where winning is nice but not necessary. Speaking of:

Winners and Losers

Winners:

The Liverpool head coach has been unexpectedly honest about it being harder to motivate players to perform at the top level after they have secured the big shiny thing they were all after, and you’d think both Arne Slot and the likes of Harvey Elliott would shake hands as winners on this one. Elliott was by no means perfect, but made a number of contributions that show what he can bring to this side. At the same time, Slot would take a look at his team’s performances and probably say that he made the right choice with his line-ups this season, as no one really did enough to warrant starting over their competitors — and yet because of the circumstance it’s likely no one is that bothered; there are a lot of mitigating factors.

Liverpool away support got to sing the Federico Chiesa song for an actual reason, with the forgotten man getting his first start of the season. He looked like he had fun, and that’s all that really counts in these friendlies.

I could tell from my Bluesky dashboard that plenty of Arsenal fans watched this one and were very happy to see us lose. A great result if you’re dedicated to discourse, though I do reckon the more failure film Arne Slot has come the real pre-season the better off Liverpool will be (and poor displays might well make transfer arguments as well, come to that).

Losers:

It’s perhaps unlucky for Brentford and — if you want to get upset — the broader sanctity of the sport — that Liverpool had no real title challengers this season, since a close-run league would mean the Reds would have had to Play To Win instead of playing to have a nice time. You truly hate to see it.

Related to this, Mohamed Salah’s Stats Book will be frustrated today: you don’t often see the Egyptian miss those. Bad day for the Mo Salah Ballon d’Or Ultras (which might just be me) — though Inter Milan and Napoli, as well as Barcelona, have a major say in that race, really.

Ryan Gravenberch’s legs and lungs a major loser today. The man is exhausted and yet is asked to go again? How many silky turns in the center circle does one fanbase really need to see??? Arne pls my boy is tired.

Talking Tactics

Okay this isn’t really an in-depth tactics section because who can be bothered? But I do desperately want to applaud Liverpool’s opening goal, as it showed some of the best the Reds have to offer as a team going forward.

StatsZone and Opta

The possession that leads to Liverpool’s opening goal is a snapshot of Slot’s Liverpool more widely: rather than looking to quickly score after a ball recovery near midfield, the Reds recycle possession in their half in and around the center circle.

Five passes occur here before Dominik Szoboszlai plays a long ball out to Mohamed Salah, who has pulled very wide to the touchline. Salah plays a deft, quick ball into Conor Bradley whose run has tucked inside Salah’s, and the right back completes a successful take-on before dribbling to the goal line. Bradley then plays a short cutback centrally in the Brighton six yard box, which Harvey Elliott neatly finishes.

Liverpool have been very discerning with their chance creation this season, and this is an example of the Reds insisting on very high-quality chances: balls played on the ground within the frame of the goal between the penalty spot and the goal line are generally going to produce the best chances, and that’s the case here.

The Reds did not play well today on the whole, but the opening period — and this goal especially — can still provide a snapshot of the elements it seems that Slot emphasizes for his players all working well.

Stats-wise, this goal was also quite important: Scoring away at Brighton meant that the 2024/25 Liverpool side are the only ones to have scored in every away match this campaign.

How The Manager Reacted

Arne Slot has been in Ibiza, and was unfortunate that a May day in Brighton produced less tropical weather. Nonetheless, he professed to have had some fun watching the football on the coast on a Monday night without a care in the world:

A great game of football. Two teams that wanted to play, two teams that wanted to win, had no intentions to do things that people normally don’t like to see if they watch a game of football, so no time-wasting, no tumbling. Two teams that were just for almost 100 minutes trying to win a game of football and with some brilliant individual moments. I’ve seen a few from us but the lead-up to the 2-2, the ball from the goalkeeper towards that midfielder that pretended to play the ball to the outside and then played [to] his midfielder was a great moment from them, and then the lead-up to the 3-2, the way Mitoma bounced that ball behind his standing leg towards the midfielder that came underneath him. [They] were from their perspective great moments, and I think there were many of those moments during the whole game from both sides. So, [a] joy to watch, unfortunately not with the result we wanted.

The press wanted him to speak on whether or not he came away with any “new” conclusions about the players who got more minutes on the night, but the Liverpool head coach refused to offer a soundbite in this regard:

I wouldn’t say [I learned anything] more, because if you work with them for 10 months it would be a bit strange if you learn new things after 10 months. But for me, I think I saw many things that I already knew and one of them is how close the margins have been throughout our whole season. And now with us failing to score the third, with us just missing maybe this two or three per cent sometimes in our defensive work, immediately it leads to us losing games of football – although I know it’s against Chelsea, I know it’s against Brighton and I know we didn’t lose against Arsenal but I know it’s against Arsenal.

But we won this league because we’ve been so consistent, we’ve done so many things right, but we haven’t won it in a way like [Manchester] City did it for the last four seasons where they just could close the eyes and they were even 4-0 up. We’ve been very close in terms of quality with all the teams we’ve competed with. That’s why it’s also such a big compliment that we won this league by such a big margin, because the quality margins are not so much different between us and some other teams, so that’s why it’s such a big compliment – especially because we’ve had our injuries throughout the season as well. To lead by 12 now is a big compliment to our players.

What Slot was willing to divulge is how Szoboszlai’s wonder-goal served as an example of training:

What I liked a lot is that we mostly have a certain routine in our set-pieces but we tried to tell them if you see something else, try to execute it. Feel free to execute if you feel there is another opportunity. I think Harvey and Dom felt it was a two-v-one at that free-kick and they outplayed that. Then, I definitely feel Dom meant to shoot that ball on target because he has a great shot and we ask him, ‘Use it more, use it more, use it more’ because in training sessions he scores from every angle. But if he is playing he is always looking where is Mo, which is not always a bad idea because Mo can score a goal as well. I don’t know how many goals he has now, but it is getting better and better for an attacking midfielder for Liverpool to have this amount of goals.

Of course, this also means Slot might want to see more output from the Hungarian captain, who shone this season both on and (especially) off the ball.

A poor result to contemplate as the Champions head back north, but you still feel that giving Slot more footage to work with isn’t the worst thing to do.