Excerpts From The Bumper TTT Post-Villa Roundup

Liverpool Thump Villa on xG in 1-0 Win

Here are a few small excerpts from the post-match roundup, including a couple from subscribers, and a few additional new thoughts from me.

PT:

Even when world-class players are mediocre by their standards, the pace of the play can be too much for opponents; while a moment of class from any of them – such as a van Dijk’s pass out to the wings, or when Alexander-Arnold hits a cross-field whizzer that fizzes with perfect accuracy – are beyond what mere mortals can offer, and help build pressure. Right now, even when Liverpool are far from their best, they rack up 3.0xG.

Part of the lack of cross success, for example, was Villa’s willingness to throw their bodies at everything, but that only meant a penalty felt inevitable. They are a side of committed penalty-box defending, but that means any mistake can be fatal. By contrast, Liverpool’s defenders often stay on their feet.

Just to add to this Substack version, Daniel shared the following Understat graphic, which tracks the cumulative xG over the 90 minutes, and it just shows what an utterly one-way game this was.

Andrew Beasley

But I will say this. Stuart Attwell doesn’t give many penalties to anyone, but prior to this match he’d given none to Liverpool and three against them. On VAR (sounds like I’m introducing the band), Lee Mason, a man whose only significant Stockley Park intervention in a Reds game was to try to convince Andre Marriner to give a penalty against Fabinho at Fulham last season, when he’d obviously won the ball.

Plus, Mohamed Salah is two goals away from equalling his final 2019/20 total.

Daniel Rhodes

This one-nil was another example of process outweighing outcome. We played well, we had four big chances and – again – nearly created three xG. We conceded nothing at all. We had two very good penalty shouts turned down, although Villa had what looked like a clear shout to me turned down as well. And that’s my point, game state is vital, and had we conceded to go one-all, who knows! But, had we been given ours, we’d be out of sight by half-time. That’s just football. Crucially, our actual football is off-the-scale considering the amount of chance we are creating. And, thankfully, because of due process, the amount of goals we are scoring. We currently have the best three forwards in the league, at our club. Name me a better one?

And from the comments:

Grover

Just watched the game in full after having been at Anfield yesterday. Forgot the fact that Atwell saw fit to usher Mané off the pitch on the opposite side if the dugout when he was substituted, presumably so no time could be wasted in Villa’s pursuit of their equaliser. Oh the irony. Earlier in the half at 0-0 he saw fit to walk slowly towards Martinez, as he took an age over a goal kick, to warn him for about the eighth time and never booked him. All it did was waste more time.

Mobykidz

According to a stat I read the most time the ball was in play during the game was 2 min 15 seconds. This was the lowest in any of our league games this season and was part of the reason we couldn’t sustain pressure. Villa players continually went down “injured” rolling around like they’d been shot. Gerrard copied the Wolves template in set up, style and approach. As for his comments afterwards who really cares. Liverpool FC owe Gerrard the player a huge debt. He got his applause and that’s it. We’ll compete for titles whilst he battles to keep Villa in the top 10. In my mind if Gerrard’s achievements get him on a Klopp successor short list that’s a big achievement. But John Henry and Mike Gordon don’t do sentiment. Ian Graham will see to that.

While David has noticed something we discuss on TTT pretty much every week, as the pattern is the same:

"Saw game stats at the end and can’t understand how we have 70% odd possession and yet only get approx 30% of the free-kicks"

It’s even more remarkable when you see the contrasting ways teams tackle Liverpool (two-footed) versus the way Liverpool try to tackle by staying on their feet, so as to be able to do something with the ball when they win it (and to not risk red cards). Players like Sadio Mané and Mo Salah are constantly pulled back, but nothing is given; yet if Mané so much as looks at an opponent he's penalised.

Villa are a very English side (seven English starters and one on as a sub), with an English manager, and as shown by several years of all-match data we assessed on TTT, with tens of thousands of data points, English refs clearly favour English players. Who’d have thought?

It also drives me mad how many teams block Liverpool’s quick free-kicks, but never get punished. Yes, the Reds do it too, but clearly not as much, and often the opposition is the team trying to slow the Reds down, and to waste time. Jon Moss sent off a Wolves player for blocking a quick free-kick, yet refs generally stopped paying attention to this years ago, and the not retreating 10 yards (often just standing over the ball) ruins the flow of the game. Moss also gave a handball penalty to City that didn’t touch arm or hand, so it was just one of those weird days.

The good news is that Liverpool won a game they absolutely deserved to win; the margin was narrow, the gulf in class a chasm.