Merson urges Klopp to learn from Tuchel’s Chelsea

Merson

told

: “If there was one team in the country that could play with a back three, I thought it was Chelsea.

“They have actually got wing-backs rather than just full-backs, if I’m being honest, and the switch has worked a treat.

“If you look at Liverpool at the moment, it’s probably the way they should have gone. When you look back at it now, Jurgen Klopp should have been a bit more flexible and thought we don’t really have good defenders without Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez.

“Maybe he should have been flexible and switched to a back three to give the players a bit more protection and also, they have wing-backs too in Andrew Robertson and Trent Alexander-Arnold, who like to go forward more than they do defending as well.

“Tuchel has come in and spotted that at Chelsea, and Klopp could have learnt a bit of a lesson from that.”

Merson added: “Going back to Klopp and Liverpool, this is hard to say but I think Klopp has been a bit blinkered.

“It really is hard to say because he is a really top manager, but when you look at their situation, you’ve got Robertson and Alexander-Arnold, who are two of the best attacking full-backs in the country and they are up there as two of the best in the world too. There is no doubt about that. You only have to look at there assists and there crossing.

“But, at the moment, they haven’t got the personnel in defence to keep things tight. If Van Dijk and Gomez aren’t there, Liverpool’s centre-backs aren’t good enough. That screams at me that they needed to switch to a back three.

“That would give you bit more protection and it would just change things up a bit. However, he stuck with 4-3-3 time and time again, and they’ve been exposed.”

Then the former

Arsenal

player went on to praise

Tuchel

: “It's a big advantage for Tuchel that the players he's bringing in when he's rotating his line-up are performing. He's rotated all the time and when you look at other teams, their starting line-up picks itself and there isn't much more to come in.

“When you look at Chelsea, he's constantly changing, but he's also getting the results. So, no-one is questioning or saying he doesn't know his best team. When Frank Lampard was doing exactly the same, the team wasn't winning football matches. It led to questions over what Lampard was doing, but he was only trying to replicate what Tuchel is doing.

“You just get away with it when you are winning every week. If they suddenly lose two games on the trot and he's still changing things, then everyone will turn around again and say he doesn't know his best team. It's a really fine line between success and failure.

“However, everything Tuchel has done so far has been perfect.

“The only slight problem I picked up on was that he should have changed things against Manchester United quicker. United were playing with such a high line against Giroud and I thought the manager should have brought on Werner a bit quicker, using him like they did at Anfield.

“Bar that minor detail, he's been outstanding. If you were a schoolteacher, you'd say A+!”

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