Manchester City vs. Liverpool: How João Cancelo, Trent Alexander-Arnold are redefining the fullback position

Sunday’s clash between Manchester City and Liverpool is about as big as matches come in the English game. There may still be seven games to go in the title race after but whoever wins it might not only take a lead that cannot be assailed (it is not beyond the realms of imagination that both sides win out after this weekend’s games) but spoils the momentum behind what could be one of the greatest seasons in football history.

For Manchester City, the prize of the treble (Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League) is within reach. Liverpool, meanwhile, have the chance to better the achievement of the 1999 Manchester United side, adding all those trophies above to the EFL Cup for an unprecedented quadruple crown. Then, there is the FA Cup semifinal between them; a Champions League bracket that seems to be inexorably drawing these two together. This could be the first act in one of the great late season battles the European game has seen.

And all of this could be decided by players who were, until recently, the least glamorous on the pitch. From the first day youngsters kick the ball around the playground, they gravitate towards being the superstar strikers, the midfielders who get to run the game or, in the case of the more esoteric children, the goalkeepers on whom all the pressure is piled. No one wants to be hidden away at fullback though. They’re the defenders who don’t really stop goals, and the auxiliary attackers whose contributions fly well under the radar. Brazilian legend Roberto Carlos was the exception that proved the rule, and as recently as 2017 there was widespread bafflement at the idea that Pep Guardiola was spending £100 million on fullbacks.

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Come Sunday, however, there will be precious few players as involved in proceedings as the quartet of Kyle Walker, Andrew Robertson, Joao Cancelo and Trent Alexander-Arnold. Those latter two in particular are among the Premier League’s most magnificently esoteric footballers. On a weekly basis they are revolutionizing their position and earning themselves the sort of glowing headlines that legendarily unsung Manchester United left back Denis Irwin could only have dreamed of.

Indeed, Alexander-Arnold ranks among the most closely examined players in English football, in particular when international breaks roll around. He is seemingly too perplexing an enigma to be solved in the limited time Gareth Southgate gets with his squad. Try though he might, he cannot bottle lightning as Jurgen Klopp has. No one needs reminding how devastating a weapon Liverpool’s right back is on the front foot but it is perhaps worth stepping back and appreciating the scale.

According to STATS Perform’s expected assists (xA) model — which assesses the likelihood that any pass will end in an assist — Mohamed Salah and Bruno Fernandes are two of the Premier League’s top three creative players with 5.61 and 6 xA to their name respectively. Leading the way is Alexander-Arnold at 10.86, a number that is akin to Fernandes’ creative output with Heung-min Son’s on top. This is graph warping stuff.

The scary thing is that his repertoire is still expanding. In years gone by Alexander-Arnold would tend to create most of his chances from wide on the right flank, fizzing in crosses of unerring accuracy from level with the penalty area or driving to the byline for a cut back. He can still create from there but this season has seen him create more opportunities from interior spaces, the sort of spot 10 yards out from the the right corner of the box that saw him provide assists against Burnley and Chelsea. The type of spot, incidentally, where you might see City’s game-controlling attacking midfielder, Kevin De Bruyne, ping balls from.

Alexander-Arnold is not quite the old school winger masquerading as a full back that he was back in Liverpool’s last title winning campaign but instead, well, it is rather hard to put a label on what he does when there are so few others doing it. Though, if you were to find anybody in the world who arguably comes close, it’s the fullback who will be on the other side of the field on Sunday. City’s Cancelo is among the few that are comparable, though certainly not the same, in terms of positioning.

The Portuguese international had an uneven start to life in England following his departure from Juventus in 2019. “There were complications with the coach, of the way the team were playing,” he said in February, having signed a new contract through to 2027. “I had a different way of playing at Juventus, I wanted to enjoy football and enjoy playing. It was my responsibility more than the coach, it was my fault. I recovered with my desire to win in life and in football.” 

Players tend to explain fluctuations in form through such intangibles, yet the changes that have established Cancelo as one of the best players in the world in his position are extremely tangible. The Portuguese international has moved up and inwards, playing an ultra narrow role this season that means on a City pass map his average position is infield from his center back Ruben Dias.

In a formation that often transforms into a 3-2-5 in attacking build up, Cancelo sits next to Rodri in midfield as the player instructed with keeping the ball moving through attacking possessions, looking to probe between the lines and slip in teammates. He functions more as a midfield playmaker than a traditional full back and it is notable that he is attempting far fewer take ons this season than when he first arrived at City. In 2019-20 3.8 percent of his carries would see him involved in a one vs. one with a defender, that proportion is now down to 2.7 percent. Meanwhile he is taking shots at a level almost unimaginable for a full back a decade ago. His 2.19 per 90 minutes in Premier League action is the same as Ollie Watkins, slightly higher than Raul Jimenez and 0.07 better than Romelu Lukaku.

These are not exactly high quality looks. Indeed, for most teams you could criticize Cancelo for frittering away good positions with a string of low value shots. Yet, for City, these long range efforts serve a different purpose. Defenders can’t simply sit back and give Cancelo the time and space to pick his shot — he showed against Newcastle this season that he really can hit them — yet the minute they come out to defend him that opens up space in behind to slip in a more deadly finisher.

Cancelo is ultra versatile. While he will likely play this tucked in role against Liverpool, on Tuesday in the Champions League, with Walker absent through suspension, he reverted to his previous flank on the right, giving Atletico Madrid all sorts of headaches with his varied positioning. One moment he would be stretching play to the byline, the next drifting infield to deliver whipped crosses off his left foot. His approach did not come without its risks and after starting out looking to attack auxiliary left back Nathan Ake the visitors soon switched to counter attacks into the space the right back had left behind.

That points to the other way in which these two could affect Saturday’s game, what they do without the ball. Last time these two met Cancelo played a more orthodox left back role, but that did not stop him getting spun by Mohamed Salah with devastating ease in the build up to both of the Egyptian’s goals. He was outjumped by Diogo Jota, beaten to the tackle by Sadio Mane and dribbled past on more than just those two occasions by Salah.

Defensive metrics are not always a perfect indicator of a player’s qualities off the ball, but it is notable that when players have dribbled at Cancelo this season they have got by him more often than not. The 36 occasions on which he has been beaten by opponents running at him is the 22nd most in the Premier League this season, and is rather high for a full back.

Of course, the questions asked of Cancelo’s defending are nothing compared to those posed of Alexander-Arnold, ones that Jurgen Klopp is increasingly hostile towards. “If anyone says Trent can’t defend, they should come to me and I’ll knock them down,” he said last month. “I cannot hear that anymore. I don’t know what the boy has to do.” Those comments came after a win against Arsenal where the right back struggled early on to contain a vibrant Gabriel Martinelli but grew into the contest. That game could tell the story of Alexander-Arnold’s career trajectory as a defender.

He is not great, but he is getting better. This season no player has made more Premier League interceptions for Liverpool than Alexander-Arnold. Intriguingly, these interceptions are not as high up the pitch as you might imagine for such an attack-minded fullback and it’s actually Cancelo who leads the Premier League in interceptions in the attacking half. Meanwhile, he has yet to commit any of the great blunders that were so often held against him in years gone by. While errors leading to shots and goals is not always the ideal metric to judge anyone’s defense, it is objectively a welcome sign if a player who made three of the former and two of the latter last season is yet to register in either category this time around.

In particular, Alexander-Arnold’s aerial duel success rate has skyrocketed from 23 percent last season to 53 percent this campaign. Like so much to do with Liverpool and defending, it may well be that Alexander-Arnold is benefitting from Virgil van Dijk’s presence alongside him again, a dominant player who can take on the more fiddly heading battles, but it is not as though the way Klopp sets out his defense is some coincidence.

After all, even if you do believe that both Alexander-Arnold and Cancelo are defensive negatives, they are such positives at the other end of the pitch that it is far better to mitigate against the risks than to not select them. Hence, Liverpool’s more cautious midfield, for instance. In 90 percent or more of the games these two teams play the off ball limitations of their full backs are bordering irrelevant anyway.

That is perhaps what makes Sunday so fascinating. It is one of those rare occasions where simply hiding one weak link on the pitch might merely invite pressure elsewhere. Alexander-Arnold and Cancelo are more likely to be match winners for Klopp and Guardiola than they are players who cost them a result, but this match up will test whether they have the defensive mettle to match up with their stellar offensive output.