Adrian must stop playing it short – the high line isn’t the issue

Liverpool need to stop Adrian playing out from the back.

Before we start talking about the high line let’s get one thing straight, we need it, it’s an essential aspect of how we play and it will not change.

Any fan out there that thinks it should be scrapped is basically saying that we should stop our high-intensity pressing of the opposition defence.

The reason our defensive line plays so high is to keep the game compact. If we do turn the ball over the distance between our backline and attack is tight and gives our opponents little space to play and sets us up to press and win the ball back early.

If we did simply drop the deeper, this would increase space between the lines and make it easier for sides to play out. If we drop the whole team back we may as well move to London and call ourselves Arsenal or Crystal Palace. The high line is essential.

I am not saying the high line doesn’t bring problems, it does. Teams will break it down and you feel that Jurgen Klopp is happy to concede one big chance a game, with the flip side being that we win the ball back high up the pitch and win it back early.

It worked very well last season, and for the first three games. So what changed against Aston Villa? It’s easy to answer, Adrian.

When we play as high a line as we currently do the goalkeeper plays a major part in giving the back four the confidence to push out to the halfway line.  His positioning has to be spot on and should the offside line be broken he has to attack the ball and sweep up with confidence.

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The defence and keeper are a unit, they must work as one and if part of this unit fails to their job then the other one can fall apart. With Alisson sweeping up behind, we only conceded 15 attempts on goal in the first three Premier League.

But more importantly, we caught the opposition offside an average of four times per game over the first few weeks and this doesn’t include the number of times the play was allowed to continue.

With Alisson injured and Adrian stepping in, Villa were able to fire off 18 attempts at the Liverpool goal and were only caught offside twice. We can say the high line doesn’t work, we can blame the defenders for not implementing the system properly, but if Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez don’t have faith in what’s behind them there are serious issues.

We saw it a couple of times with Gomez not knowing whether to drop back or step up. We saw Adrian being far to slow off his line and getting caught in no man’s land as Jack Grealish easily chipped the ball past him.

We know the high line will not go, so serious work has to be done to reunite Adrian with the back four and it should start with banning the Spanish keeper from playing out from the back in tight situations.

Playing it long will make the opposition second guess about pressing him. This will in turn see them drop off and give Adrian more time to play out and allow us to slip into our normal game style.

I have full faith that Klopp will fully sort out what went wrong at Villa Park but I have a feeling that it won’t be smooth sailing.

No matter what fans think, Liverpool do not have a divine right to win every game and we should be prepared for a few hairy moments and pray that Alisson gets his shoulder sorted sooner rather than later.