It was hardly a highlight of his long run, but Arne Slot did find some spin. His comments came on Tuesday evening, after one of the most breathless halves of the season, when Liverpool left Nottingham Forest with a point and Slot suggested that one side was more keen on a draw than the other.
In addition to some healthy praise for the team he faced, he said, “There were also many moments where it took a while for play to resume.”
When asked to explain this, the Liverpool manager said: 'You want as much playing time as possible, but a team that is happy with the current result wants as little playing time as possible.'
There was nothing over the top moan there, but he was looking for a little takedown off the wicket. A gentle nudge perhaps.
And he would have had a few stats in his corner, had he been inclined to use them: 23 shots to six in Liverpool's favour, 9-0 from corners, 71 per cent of the ball and the wait for Elliot was boring. Anderson has to recover from a collision with Trent Alexander-Arnold's shoulder. In terms of figures, a 1-1 draw might not have looked like a good return for Slot after all.
But I hope we know Forest a little better by now.
The idea that they rested on what they had doesn't stand up to a review of the tape or any other memory of this season – it has no legs. But Bos does. They absorbed kitchen sinks with their faces, chopped up clearances, hit Matz Sels on the back so hard his discs must have splintered, and yet Nuno Espirito Santo's team stormed their way to the other side of the field. Repeatedly.
And that's the key here: they attacked. They went in waves. At speed. Almost always on the counter and with a degree of directness that the contenders simply no longer go for these days.
It's all in the footage, especially from the period between the 66th and 97th minutes, when it was level. Liverpool's chances were better, more frequent, and how wonderful it is to see them in full flight.
But there were two in this dance, so let's return to the idea that Forest were watching the clock by looking at what followed immediately after one of Sels' many saves from Diogo Jota.
Curtis Jones has collected the loose ball, on the edge of the woodland area, and there he is tackled by Nicolas Dominguez. It is the trigger for this team's strength, because nine seconds later the play has shifted 80 meters up the field. The ball has traveled a fast path to get there – one pass is drilled from Gibbs-White to Callum Hudson-Odoi and another goes the other way back to Gibbs-White, nine touches in total, three men. Suddenly Liverpool are on their heels before the move fails in the six-yard box.
Within minutes the same combination did it all again, 10 seconds from one area to another, 10 touches, from right to left to right. Two more minutes and there they are again, this time as Hudson-Odoi has intercepted a strike 18 yards from his goal line and sent Anthony Elanga on a chase. Fewer touches this time, even faster.
Once again there is no finish, as Liverpool's defense is worthy of a title, but there was also no rush to get the ball to the corner flag. It was end to end to end to end, or “chaos,” as Steve McManaman shouted in the excitement of his commentary. And chaos is about right. Brilliant, unconventional chaos.
What we didn't see was Pep Guardiola's football. And that is indeed a great kind of football. A football that produced 1,000 imitators and 100 lateral passes per game. The kind of football built on possession, patience and all-round excellence, with all eyes looking for routes to a cutback on the byline. That can sometimes turn into a football version of Andy Dufresne who has been chipping away at the cell wall with a rock hammer for years.
But that's not Bos. They use dynamite.
Their football does not put pressure on pressing in prescribed zones. Their manner relies on choreography and precise timing, just like Guardiola's, but if Nuno wrote this column it would be two paragraphs long. Maybe it's better for that.
It's the football of Hudson-Odoi and Gibbs-White, reimagined as a pair of double-barreled shotguns, Murillo as a wall, as Sels continues to move on from life as fourth-choice goalkeeper at Newcastle. It's Elliot Anderson as the action hero, 33-year-old Chris Wood who feeds on 70-yard kicks from Sels and one-touch balls from midfield. One shot, one kill. It is Nikola Milenkovic who heads, blocks, tackles and has little throw-back qualities outside his hinterland. For £12 million, Forest robbed Fiorentina blind by getting him.
As a collective they have been amazing to watch over the last few months and I have rarely enjoyed a game as much as I did on Tuesday.
That's about the beauty of differences. The beauty of different styles, different approaches, different ways to defend and attack. That is why I especially hope to keep Ange Postecoglou at Tottenham, but his football does not work like Nuno's.
There are two thoughts attached to Forest's ascent this season. One is the mind-boggling nature of where they are compared to what they should be in our ecosystem. And the other is the how. How they have built a team based on unprecedented talents and how they play, with a directness that is not common in the top three.
I tend to dislike discussions that break down football into a statistical study. But some are startling, such as the possession figures in the eight years since Guardiola arrived in the Premier League.
The subject of his influence has been discussed at length elsewhere, as has the result that everyone now wants a bit of Pep in their game. Slot does too, Mikel Arteta, Enzo Maresca, Graham Potter and the coach whose team beat my daughter's side in the Under 11s last week.
Well done, it's sublime. And it is equally well known that too much of a good thing can make life a bit monotonous. But there is nothing the same about the how of Nottingham Forest in the recent past.
Opta provided me with some data points this week showing that only 18 teams have experienced a season with an average of 40 percent possession or less per game since 2016. Seven of them crashed and none got higher than 10th place. Allowing the other team to come at you is usually a symptom of limitations.
But then there is Nuno's Forest, the outlier. Not urgent, rarely above 300 passes per game, average 39 percent ball possession. They are a difference we never knew we wanted to see.
They make us think of possibilities that will certainly not come to fruition from Leicester City, but at the very least Forest are picking a branch and thrusting it into the eyes of tactical snobs everywhere.
I would never put Slot in that category, but what he saw as killing time would be better appreciated as a team that needs a lot less to create fantastic explosions.
Can Chelsea keep the B team stars happy?
It was no surprise that Chelsea slaughtered Morecambe last weekend; they have an expensive B-team to deal with the lesser challenges of a busy season.
It's part of the strategy. But how sustainable is it to keep players happy when they know progress will bring limited rewards?
Christopher Nkunku scored in that match, giving him 13 for the season, mainly against minnows in the Conference League, and none of those goals were followed by a start in the next Premier League match.
Joao Felix is in a similar boat, with six goals in the cups, including two screamers against Morecambe, but Enzo Maresca saw no point in letting go of his confidence against Bournemouth on Tuesday.
He was back on the bench, as he has been after all his goals. For him and Nkunku, the reason is Cole Palmer. Tough one, that.
But Nkunku is open to leaving this month and Felix's frustrations have occasionally surfaced.
That's all well and good with a deep roster, but no one wants to feed on low-hanging fruit forever.
Angry skeptics give me hope
Tyson Fury retired this week. No one in boxing believed him. There may still be hope for the sport.
Comments