TACTICAL ANALYSIS: Liverpool laid down their biggest statement performance of the Andoni Iraola era to date to beat the high-flying Seagulls 2-0 at Anfield

Liverpool may have just laid waste to one of the Premier League's form teams with two quickfire goals in the first 20 minutes, but it was one moment at the other end of the pitch shortly afterwards that best summarised the Reds' resolve.

It was in the 27th minute, as the visitors started to threaten Liverpool's box, when on-loan defender Ronald Araujo slid in to make a crucial challenge - with his head.

The commitment shown by the No. 33 has made him an instant fan favourite among the Anfield faithful, and for good reason. Perhaps more than any other player on the pitch, he epitomised the standards that Liverpool have set for themselves defensively since Andoni Iraola's appointment, with supporters naturally warming to the renewed pride shown in keeping clean sheets.

In fact, only Arsenal and Sunday's (Oct 25) opponents, Brighton, have kept more clean sheets than Liverpool's four this season, which only serves to further underline how impressive the Reds were in carving their opponents apart and inflicting just a second league defeat of the season.

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It was certainly a game of two halves - Liverpool producing a resilient defensive performance in the second - but it is hard to argue that Iraola's side were undeserved winners after the Reds' attackers proved to be an utter mismatch for Brighton's defenders before the break.

Nevertheless, that's precisely what Brighton manager Fabian Hurzeler argued when speaking to the media after the final whistle. "I think there was much more in it and we definitely deserved more," Hurzeler said.

"When we only look at the performance today, everyone in the stadium saw that there was one team who really tried to create and tried to win this game and therefore I have to praise my players."

Never mind the fact that Liverpool were 2-0 up before Brighton knew what was happening to them - apparently, we should all be grumbling about a negative performance in which the Reds would seemingly have settled for anything less than all three points, and lauding the poor martyrs of Brighton for having at least "stuck to the match plan", as the 33-year-old later put it.

It would appear Hurzeler is unfamiliar with the concept of pragmatism. A more pragmatic manager, for example, might have realised that starting one of the league's slowest left-backs against one of its fastest right wingers was a disaster waiting to happen - and Hurzeler didn't have to wait long for the decision to blow up in his face.

Ultimately, the stats don't lie: Liverpool cruised into a two-goal lead before limiting their righteous visitors to just one shot on target over the course of the entire game.

It was a performance that proved games can be controlled without possession - but how did the Reds pull it off?

Another fast start pays dividends

Liverpool were quick out of the blocks before comfortably seeing off newly-promoted Ipswich 2-0 earlier in the season, and this game followed much the same pattern.

Granted, Sunday's opponents were a far superior side - for all that Hurzeler should be lampooned for his comments after the game, the German has built Brighton into a serious contender for places in the top quarter of the Premier League - but, as they did at Portman Road, Liverpool in hindsight had pretty much won the game by the time the cheers died down for Alexander Isak's ruthlessly-taken goal that made it 2-0.

In our tactical preview we predicted that Iraola would start with Rio Ngumoha on the right to exploit Brighton left-back Olivier Boscagli's relatively poor record of being dribbled past 0.92 times per 90 (now up to 1.00), with Bradley Barcola taking up left-wing duties to force back Albion's quickest defender in Ferdi Kadioglu.

Kadioglu, though, lasted just six minutes before injury forced Hurzeler to replace him with Portuguese full-back Costinha, and Iraola opted to start Cody Gakpo on the left - with Barcola, instead, tasked with trying to hurt Boscagli with pace.

Pace in transition was always going to be a winning condition for Liverpool in this game - Brighton don't have a single player in the top 75 highest top speeds in the division - and Boscagli, primarily a central defender, was susceptible, being in the bottom 6% of players in the league in his position for top speed.

When Barcola closed him down to intercept his pass out of defence, the ball deflecting back past the £123m man's compatriot, there was only going to be one winner in that particular foot race. One beautifully chipped cross for Isak later, and Liverpool were two to the good.

At that point, it looked like it could well go on to be five or six. Brighton had threatened first, Yasin Ayari passing up what would end up being the Seagulls' best chance of the game when Pascal Gross burst free from Virgil van Dijk into the box, but Liverpool were irresistible in transition.

It was end-to-end stuff, but the Reds were coming out on top in a highly competitive physical battle, winning 18 duels up to the second goal (66.7%) and making 20 final third entries to Brighton's 13.

Gakpo was a constant threat in behind Costinha as both of the Reds' wingers had the beating of their respective full-backs, and Liverpool racked up 44 passes in the final third to Brighton's 25 in that initial c.20-minute spell.

The first goal, which went down as a Gross own goal with Florian Wirtz's initial effort heading wide, came after a rampaging run up the right from Araujo, the defender hurdling two challenges to hit a cross back across the area which the visitors failed to clear.

Liverpool's pressing, on full display for the second goal, resulted in possession being won in the final third four times in the first half alone - Brighton managed it just once.

With the visitors' outfielders being allowed no time on the ball, Brighton had to change things up. At the midway point of the first half, Bart Verbruggen stood on the ball for an extended period, daring the Reds' press to break ranks - but Iraola's charges stayed rigidly man-to-man and didn't fall for one of the oldest tricks in the Seagulls' book.

With little in the way of other options, Brighton were thus forced to go long - directing 12.8% of their first-half passes over the Liverpool press in a break from their usual close-quarters possession play.

Liverpool, invariably, dealt with this, winning 67.6% of the aerial battles over the course of the game. Constantly looking to exploit the gaps in Brighton's defence as the visitors committed more and more bodies to the attack, the Reds also went long with 16.1% their own passes - a figure that rose even further in the second half to 19.2%.

Last week at Brentford, Liverpool went long just 8.7% of the time. Make no mistake, the massive increase in long passes was a pragmatic decision from Iraola having identified his opponent's biggest weakness - van Dijk explained as much after the game.

Boscagli in particular became a liability for Hurzeler up against Barcola. After the second goal, the Brighton boss seemed to tweak things slightly - Boscagli holding the width further forward with Costinha playing a deeper role in build-up, thereby putting Barcola up against Lewis Dunk more often than the Frenchman - but his substitution at the break was telegraphed long before he picked up a yellow card on the cusp of half time.

That saw Maxim De Cuyper, one of the Seagulls' most productive attacking players this season, shunted back to left-back. With him still needed in the attacking third, though, he played a mirror of the role the injured Kadioglu typically plays, taking up high positions in possession while his opposite full-back - Costinha - held his ground more often.

'Stick to the match plan', indeed. After building 51.2% of their first-half moves through the right attacking third, Brighton completely shifted focus (45.7%) to their left in the second half.

Unfortunately for them, that's exactly where Araujo was - ready and waiting.

Pragmatism pays off

Liverpool's No. 33 was nothing short of immense. Winning all five of his duels, two of his three tackles and making eight clearances, the Uruguayan was the poster boy of Liverpool's rearguard in the second half.

The extent to which Araujo was involved defensively is reflected in the fact that the former Barcelona captain actually made more touches (59) than any other player in red, while only Alexis Mac Allister won possession more times (seven) than his six.

Not only was Araujo a defensive wall, but he played an underrated part in getting the ball towards the other end of the pitch. No other Liverpool player made more line-breaking passes than his 10 (Fotmob), ahead of usual suspects Wirtz and Jeremy Jacquet, while he also made 10 final third entries (passes or carries into the final third) - only matched by Alisson.

Araujo even stung the palms of Verbruggen in the first half with a ripper of an effort, coming at the end of a silky move involving all three of the Reds' midfielders, though almost all of his contributions after half time happened further back.

Undeniably, Liverpool dropped deeper in the second half. Possession dropped even further from 37.6% in the first half to 33.6% in the second, shots dropped from nine to four, and the Reds only won possession in the attacking third once after the break.

This was in part a result of Brighton forcing them back - a promising attack from the visitors just before the break, only thwarted by a vital touch from Jacquet, showed how Liverpool can start to look open when one of the centre-backs follows his man into midfield - but it was also an intentional move from Iraola to absorb the pressure and continue to look to hit the Seagulls on the counter.

"[We defended well] especially in the second half," Iraola told reporters after the game. "Second half, obviously, we defended lower, we didn't give so much space.

"It was 50-50 in the first half. Both defences were quite high and then there was space in behind both defensive lines. Second half, I think we were more compact.

"But, it's a team that if you see stats and they cross a lot, so you have to do the basics very well, you have to clear the ball very well, you have to block shots very well, block crosses, win second balls.

"And I think overall our defenders have been have been good doing those basics."

Liverpool certainly were good at the basics, and then some. Five blocks, 11 tackles, 19 clearances - no matter what Brighton threw at them in the second half, the Reds had an answer for it - especially in the air, where 80% of aerial duels went Liverpool's way.

Trey Nyoni also made a huge intervention on De Cuyper when the Belgian looked set to claw a goal back, steaming in from nowhere to make a massive clearance - before his midfield partner, Mac Allister, rushed out to close down the follow-up shot from Ayari.

As Chris Kamara once put it, the Reds fought like beavers - and though they were rewarded with their fourth clean sheet in the league this season, Alisson's goal was rarely threatened.

For all that Hurzeler insisted his side deserved to win the game, Brighton managed just one shot on target in the entire game - and that was in the first half.

Despite their dominance of possession, the visitors created just 0.52 xG in the second half and failed to muster a single big chance, taking five of their nine shots from outside the box despite pumping a whopping 11 crosses into Liverpool's box from open play.

Across the entire game, Brighton's xGOT (expected goals on target) reached just 0.09. Bad finishing can account for some of that, but when an attack that has plundered a league-high 23 goals pulls up this short, surely the defending side deserves the bulk of the credit?

Liverpool, whose xGOT at the final whistle stood at 1.25, were everything Brighton were not - gritty, mature and clinical. Sometimes, it is not the team that dominates the ball that controls the game.

There is more to Iraola

Given much of the discourse around Andoni Iraola when he was appointed as Arne Slot's replacement, the comparisons with Jurgen Klopp were unavoidable.

Here, or so we were led to believe, was a manager with a singular and deeply emotional view of football and how it should be played, unrelenting in his pursuit of intensity and ultimately inflexible in his principles.

Even over the first two months of the season, the half-hearted narrativisation (in some sections of the media) of Liverpool's 'defensive issues' - which, barring the surreal and quite possibly meaningless defeat to Manchester City, have only really reared their head when the manager has rung the changes in similarly meaningless early Champions League games - has seemed to paint Iraola as some kind of tactical zealot.

Like Marcelo Bielsa or Roberto De Zerbi before him, these kinds of extreme ideas might make for attractive football, we're told, but they'll never win you a league title or produce predictable results with minimal jeopardy.

Long may this perception of Liverpool continue. It is not that large sections of the media have it in for Iraola - far from it - but his personality and his ideas are sometimes treated as if they're something quaint, to be enjoyed but not taken too seriously.

Another Spanish Liverpool manager was seen as quaint when he arrived at the club in 2004 with new ideas about professionalism and sports science, and a new formation in the 4-2-3-1 he had helped pioneer at Valencia.

Rafa Benitez won the Champions League in his first season at Anfield, and if he hadn't been limited by the deterioration of the club's financial clout during one of the most perilous times in Liverpool's history, his record may have been even greater.

Iraola's Liverpool may not be taken seriously - yet - but the gradual return of a winning mentality that has seen the Reds win eight of their last 10 games and concede just one goal in the league with 11 players on the pitch has silenced the crisis talk that lingered right up until the weekend just gone with the talk of no home league wins in six months.

That was true, of course - Liverpool hadn't won at home since Crystal Palace visited in April - but ultimately a wilful misrepresentation in that the Reds actually only played five home league games during that time, with two of them under the previous manager.

Far from suggesting some kind of conspiracy against Liverpool, I do understand that such easily-digestible nuggets make for good copy - but, like the mad-preacher caricature of Iraola, they don't hold up to scrutiny.

Against Brighton, Iraola showed there is far more to his game than just balls-to-the-wall, thrill-a-minute football. We had a veritable feast of that in the first half, yes, but the second half showed a mature and pragmatic side that, bit by bit, we're starting to see more of.

As we saw against Ipswich, Iraola's Liverpool are more than happy to manage games once they have a lead they feel comfortable defending, while against Villarreal, we also saw how Iraola can tweak his system during a match to plug the gaps and swing the game in his favour.

Rather than his specific football philosophy, what appears to drive Iraola more than anything as Liverpool manager is standards. Standards of work effort, standards of defending, standards of bravery.

We saw all of that and more against Brighton. Not only have Liverpool become more solid, but the big-money attack that looked like a gilded cage last season is now starting to develop into a cohesive unit capable of leaving opposition sides shell-shocked.

Arsenal beware - this makes Liverpool a far more serious prospect than many will be expecting at this stage of the season.