Data That Shows Liverpool Are By Far the Best Team This Season

FREE READ. I Was Wrong Last Season, But Could It Be Happening Now?

Two things.

First, are City and Arsenal jaded?

Second, the underlying numbers in games against good teams.

First

I spent the second half of last season waiting for the exhaustion of Man City and Arsenal to set in.

While I never say anything is definite in football, I deal in probabilities, and it felt like they surely had to hit the wall sooner or later.

I kept checking the minutes players like Declan Rice and Rodri were playing, for club and country, and yet it was Liverpool who fell away; albeit with this group of players (and an entirely new midfield) going 31 games into a title chase, whilst juggling three cup competitions and a ton of injuries and young stand-ins, that ultimately took its toll in what was a season of reinvention for the side.

So I got it wrong.

I’m not sure I even bothered to think about how Rodri, Rice, et al, would feel after the Euros in the summer (plus the players at the Copa America), as I just assumed they’d keep churning it out; I may have noted it, but maybe thought they’re just close to superhuman.

Of course, they are not.

Rodri is now badly injured, and Rice’s numbers appear to have fallen off a cliff. Meanwhile, Liverpool’s young midfield is thriving.

Liverpool ‘tired’ in 2020/21 after two years of going win-for-win with Man City, and an injury crisis tore the team apart. All of the centre-backs were out for the season by halfway (some by early autumn).

In 2019/20, City were on the back of their own season-after-season record runs, and once Liverpool got six points ahead after 10 games it became 11 points after 15 games. City then felt ‘broken’ by the runaway Reds.

Last season my focus was on what I called Density and Intensity: the difficulty of the fixtures in terms of opposition and time between games, and then how it adds up over, say, a month.

I’m now calling this the more generic Cumulative Effort.

And while Cumulative Effort is not designed for a whole season, as you will have varying degrees of difficulty (unless you go on long cup runs always against quality opposition), it perhaps carries over from the previous summer, especially if you add a lot of games for your country in the summer.

Cumulative Effort is what you can’t easily measure, but what silently adds up, like carbon monoxide poisoning.

Some players are almost indestructible and others injury-prone, but both Virgil van Dijk in 2020 and Rodri in 2024 showed that an ACL can happen to anyone.

Of Liverpool’s regulars this season, none had a full 2023/24 workload, and those who went far in the summer international competitions are being rotated.

Even Mo Salah had an uncustomary two-month break at the start of 2024, then the summer off.

If anything, Salah returned rusty in the spring, and the Reds had actually done better in his absence. But that time away (and the summer break), long-term, could be why he’s so sharp right now. Plus, of course, players in the final year of the contracts tend to do better but don’t tell anyone that.

Ryan Gravenberch, the (cliché alert) Rolls Royce midfielder, didn’t play a lot of minutes last season (same as the season before where he mostly only trained with Bayern Munich).

Cody Gakpo had a busy summer, but not a busy Liverpool schedule either side of it.

Ibrahima Konaté sat out half of last season, and thus lost his place in the France XI this summer. Had he played more games last season and started for his country at the Euros, he might have been injured by now (beyond someone falling on him).

Trent Alexander-Arnold only played the equivalent of 23.9 league games last season, and was quickly binned by Gareth Southgate in the summer.

And yet, even then, only five Liverpool players played more league minutes last season than the Reds’ no.66; and one of those was Alisson.

Incredibly, Luis Díaz was second for league minutes played last season, and that was just 29.2-games’ worth. Only van Dijk topped 30.

Yet Díaz is being rotated this season, and hasn’t had a family kidnapping to deal with.

Darwin Núñez is not going to be jaded, having been barely used late last season and for much of this season. (Maybe there’s more concern with Alexis Mac Allister, but right now, Curtis Jones is playing better in that role.)

One of the reasons so many kids got minutes in Jürgen Klopp’s final year is because no one bar the captain (and Díaz by 0.2 ‘90s’) played even three-quarters of the league minutes in 2023/24; and in the cups, it was often the kids there, too, with the Europa League low priority initially. Ditto the League Cup.

Right now, even if things can always change, if feels to me like City and Arsenal are running low on energy, and whilst both will logically remain title contenders, they could be due a ‘dip’ season; just at the time when the Champions League adds another 2-4 games, and City have the summer nonsense ahead.

City also like to prepare to peak later in the season, but so do all top teams. And it’s no good peaking when you’re cut adrift. Arne Slot hasn’t prepared Liverpool just to play until November.

But teams often drop off for a season, and it’s just part of the ebb and flow.

It’s so often seen as terminal, but unless (as with individuals) age is an issue, it can just be hitting the wall and needing to refresh. You just have to be careful not to fall away too far.

Indeed, just look at Bayer Leverkusen; still a great team, but not quite getting the results they did last season; not quite dominating as much and grabbing those late, late winners. The underlying numbers are excellent; but no longer outstanding.

City have shown they can come back from being adrift, but it’s not a given; just as it’s not a given that the Reds keep winning almost 90% of their games under Arne Slot.

Indeed, that’s not possible, albeit with slightly worse underlying numbers (including ‘losing’ to Southampton on xG early on), Liverpool won 96.3% of their first 27 league games of 2019/20.

Yet this team is fresh. Again, incredibly, in all competitions, Joe Gomez played the 4th-most minutes for Liverpool in 2023/24, at 3,145; or the equivalent of a mere 34.9 games/‘90s’, and a fraction more than Salah’s 34.8.

Salah had the summer off, and it’s showing. Rodri was run into the ground, and it’s showing.

Even Declan Rice’s numbers are down dramatically, from seven goals and eight assists last season to zero and one from a quarter of this season; despite averaging the exact same underlying numbers (0.9xG per 90 vs 0.9xG, 0.16xA versus 0.15xA).

Maybe he just blew hot last season, on a high; or he hasn’t got the mental clarity and confidence right now, after a tough season, a tough summer and back into a tough season.

Across last season Rice made 83 tackles, winning 51; so, 2.3 tackles per 90, 1.4 won.

This season, it’s 1.3 tackles per 90, 0.5 won.

So last season he was winning three times as many tackles per 90. His take-on success rate has fallen from 43.5% to 40%, which while not major, is roughly a 10% drop-off.

The distance he’s carrying the ball has fallen from 284.7 yards per 90 to 177.4. All this suggests a more tired player, but also perhaps that Arsenal have had to play with 10 men, albeit once Rice himself was sent off, he didn’t have to chip in. I don’t know if his role is also different, but he’s winning far fewer tackles, carrying the ball far less, and scoring and assisting far less. He seems an elite athlete, but maybe he’s just knackered.

Meanwhile, City had no fewer than seven players who played 40.4 games (as minutes) last season, and all are outfield players. Many of those then played in the summer, too.

Rodri was top with 4,167 minutes (46.3 games’ worth), but there were all the Spain games last season and at the Euros too. And the brilliant Kevin de Bruyne is not someone who stays fit all season. You can say “when he returns”, but will he return and stay returned?

He was one back on the bench at the weekend when City’s injury crisis was five-deep. (Liverpool were without Alisson, Diogo Jota, Federico Chiesa and Harvey Elliott, as well as a number of young reserves, but I can’t do the maths.)

Arsenal had eight players who played over 40 games in terms of 2023/24 minutes, with Martin Ødegaard one of those who played more than 4,000 minutes (44.9 games).

Again, all the data shows that the Premier League is getting harder and faster and fiercer. Players are bigger and stronger, and it takes more to go up against them, even if you’re bigger and stronger.

And while the players are now super-fit (sometimes to the point of racehorse-like fragility with things like hamstrings in the case of Micky van de Ven), few sports have a 10-month fully-active season, and few sports then pretty much take up the rest of the time with even more action. It must be mentally draining too, in that it’s almost impossible to get private moments anymore.

(I noticed this was raised by the Athletic podcast last night, but comparing basketball, with its shorter games, and constant subbing, and far less brutal physical contact including from studded boots and clashes of heads, seemed odd. The playing area is smaller too, so there aren’t the same 70-yard sprints, on a court that is around 30 yards. It’s not comparable in any way, but the point remains that they have four months off after an 80-game season, and want more time off. All that said, I don’t watch basketball! They did also raise a good point about the age of so many Man City players.)

Players hate being subbed off, but it’s often for their own good; until they become managers themselves they only tend to view through their own individualistic lens. (That’s why I ignore most of what players have to say, and certainly their dumb social media goons.)

Seeing as Arsenal and Man City fought out the previous two titles to the end, and City did the same in 2021/22 with Liverpool, then these clubs could just be due a collective collapse.

Erling Haaland, with a summer off, seems fresh, but the more most of these players are pushed, season after season (and most summers too), then there will come a point where they start to feel it. And even Haaland will be less good if the team around him becomes less good. I haven’t checked by I imagine Haaland’s numbers have dropped sharply since Rodri got injured; certainly that’s the sense I get.

Gravenberch is literally pivotal for Liverpool this season, but he’s also being totally left out of the League Cup games. He may tire as the season wears on (albeit he had elite fitness data at Ajax as a teen that paved his way to start games aged 16), but what about those who came into the season tired? He certainly didn’t.

Harvey Elliott was a game-changer for Liverpool last season from the bench, and both he and Federico Chiesa are lock-pickers, as is Diogo Jota, who drives with the ball towards dangerous areas. Chiesa arrived with no preseason, so it’ll take time.

If Jota can escape from people ploughing into or falling onto him, he should be as fresh as a daisy for the rest of the season.

Plus, other clubs would be given credit for winning without their no.1 keeper; not Liverpool.

To make it clear, a selection of all-competition 2023/24 game-time, as 90s, were as follows:

• Dominik Szoboszlai 30.0

• Trent Alexander-Arnold 29.0

• Ibrahima Konaté 28.7

• Curtis Jones 22.6

• Andrew Robertson 24.4

• Ryan Gravenberch 20.4

• Diogo Jota 19.0

• Conor Bradley 16.7

• Kostas Tsimikas 16.3

As I said last season, the setbacks of injuries allowed the squad to get stronger via the proving ground of playing, for those who might have gained less experience; Bradley, for example, and also the first extended league run for Caoimhín Kelleher.

I don’t know how Arne Slot and his staff reduce muscle injuries, but in Holland they did so, and it’s one of the reason they’re now at Liverpool; in the Premier League, it’s more intense.

But so far it’s mostly impact injuries and broken bones for the Reds.

If Slot can keep the injury count below six, and maybe below three key players, then a lot more becomes possible. Klopp’s worst runs almost always coincided with a massive injury crisis, with 10 players or more missing.

Equally, the season is even more crowded than normal, and yet again Liverpool are one game away from the two-legged League Cup semis, having yet again drawn Premier League sides so far.

We also know that Man City have greater resources, and perhaps even other ways to find that little bit extra; in addition to elite players and an elite manager.

Second

“Liverpool Haven’t Played Anyone Good Yet” !

So, given this narrative, let’s strip out the results against the fodder – promoted or struggling teams (in home games as going away can still be tougher), and matches against teams from outside the good leagues in the Champions League – and look at the underlying numbers in what remains.

Funnily enough, Liverpool are left with 13 games from their 13 sample (with League Cup games excluded, albeit those were against West Ham and Brighton).

The only promoted team faced in the 13 is Ipswich away; and mid-table Brentford, winning lots of plaudits this season, are the ‘worst’ team faced at home; none of the bottom eight have come to Anfield yet.

Equally, in the Champions League it’s been the then-leaders in Germany, and two Italian teams (only one of them at home before tonight’s game versus the German champions.) If you go away to AC Milan and batter them, then as I said at the time, that’s a good sign.

City are down to just nine games, when you remove home games against Ipswich and Southampton, and the two ‘gimmes’ in the Champions League (Slovan Bratislava, Sparta Prague).

For Arsenal, remove Leicester and Southampton at home, and Shakhtar. Admittedly they’ve played some of the remaining games with ten men, but that’s mostly self-inflicted.

Doing this only occurred to me after Liverpool’s recent run of four “suddenly they’ll play good teams” saw not just good results, but good xG advantages, after facing Chelsea, RB Leipzig, Arsenal and Brighton in quick succession.

And if you’re going to say that Liverpool have only played weaker teams, let’s do it properly, and strip out the dross.

What you’re left with is that Liverpool have played more difficult games as defined by the Premier League table (factoring in home/away), and the Champions League.

Yet have by far the better numbers when you reduce City and Arsenal to only similar fixtures.

In just one of the 13 Liverpool games has the xG Difference been less than +0.4 in Liverpool’s favour; away at Arsenal, -0.1.

It’s four times for City, and seven for Arsenal.

Otherwise, no one has got close to outplaying Liverpool, certainly on xG balance.

But three of City’s recent games had an xG Difference of:

• -0.7 (Newcastle away)

• -1.0 (Fulham at home)

• -0.4 (Bournemouth away)

With a controversial win against Wolves in the mix too (last-gasp offside goal given as onside), albeit with a +0.8xG difference, which was fractionally less than Liverpool achieved.

The Reds’ underlying numbers in the 13 games far outstrip those of Arsenal and Man City, whose big xG wins came against the worst sides, at home.

• Liverpool’s xG Difference (13 games) is an elite +1.13

• City’s xG Difference (nine games) is a middling +0.54

• Arsenal’s xG Difference (10 games) is a very poor -0.11

Plus, I’m being kind to Arsenal by keeping Wolves at home in the mix, otherwise their data would be even worse, removing a +0.7 xG ‘win’. (First games of the season are rarely easy, and Wolves weren’t in a funk then, but I could have removed it.)

Click to enlarge

In games excluding the dross, Liverpool have the highest xG for, and the lowest xG against.

And it’s consistent, too. It’s not feast or famine; the red line is consistently above the dark grey, on the graph above, in contrast to the two initial title favourites.

Plus, as you can see, Liverpool’s xG against has only gone above 1.1 one time, and that was due to the late 1.3xG added by Man United when 3-0 down to the Reds. It still counts, but game-state was a factor.

City have conceded 2.0xG and 2.6xG, to Fulham and Bournemouth respectively. Plus, 1.6xG against at Newcastle.

Their xG data has nosedived since the Rodri injury (vs Arsenal); perhaps he really is that important, or they have come to believe so to the point where they lose belief without him. Certainly he’s an elite player, who does a bit of everything incredibly well, and adds heft as well as deftness of touch.

Arsenal’s xG against has been above 1.1 on no fewer than five occasions, albeit sendings off added to that. As such, you can argue that Arsenal will be better when playing with eleven men (naturally), but part of their undoing has been time-wasting tactics, which they seem to rely on to control games. (That’s great if the refs don’t apply the rules.)

And now, a key part of their success (Edu) has quit, and Man City have uncertainty behind the scenes in a manner of ways, including an uncertain future for their manager, and there’s probably no data on managers in their final years doing better, unlike players.

And what people thought of as easy games for Liverpool thus far included Nottingham Forest, who are now third.

Liverpool now play Leverkusen at home and Aston Villa at home, before the international break.

More tough games, before things start to get easier, albeit still with incredibly difficult games thrown in at regular intervals; but just getting to play teams like Southampton at home as well.

As ever, the past is the best gauge for the future, but things can also change.

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