High-Possession, Hard-Pressing Teams – and the Outlying Mystery of LFC's Consistent Lack of Free-Kicks

"The Final Refereeing Mystery!" A look at team styles and how refs react

I've mostly given up on undertaking any new refereeing analysis, but there's one mystery that pops up on the site quite a lot after almost every game: why did Liverpool boss possession, yet again, but concede more fouls, yet again.

As such, I thought it was worth looking into the patterns around tackles, fouls, pressing and possession; not least by comparing Liverpool with teams who play the same kind of football. (And even if you have no interest in the officiating side of this piece, there’s some analysis of the styles of teams.)

As you can guess with most officiating and Liverpool, the Reds remain weird outliers; as can be seen below for this season so far.

I'll go on to explain the chart above for this season (including looking at tackles/tackled volume), and go back to 2021/22, the last time Liverpool were this good, and look at that whole season, and the patterns from then, too.

Again, I don't ever allege conspiracies, but as with yellow cards for opponents (and especially second-yellows with just one in over 300 games), penalties, Big Decision balance vs Expected Big Decisions, subjective VAR interventions (ie not offsides) and a whole host of other officiating metrics that I've delved into over the years (and updated this summer), the Reds seem to be total outliers yet again.

I have my theories, clearly (not conspiratorial, but about human failings, redressing perceived Anfield favouritism when the opposite is true, social media outrage at when the Reds get any big decision, historical biases, and with a bit of manager-hating thrown in) … but it would be nice to know for sure why refs treat Liverpool so differently to teams who play the same kind of football, or if there’s something Liverpool do that's radically different, and isn't captured by the data. Because other teams press like Liverpool do, too.

(I'll update the Mo Salah stats, too, to show that he wins about as many free-kicks as he scores goals; i.e. less than one per game.)

In this case, averaged across the games, Liverpool have far more possession than the opposition, make far fewer tackles than the team they are playing, and for all other teams who press the same way (and who make fewer tackles than they are tackled), that would mean winning far more free-kicks.

Except for Liverpool, it's conceding far more free-kicks than they win.

As Toyah Wilcox once said: Thundering, thundering in the mountains! It's a mystery, oh it's a mystery…

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