It’s In Reds’ Hands - Analysing the Run-ins and the Underlying Numbers

Various clubs have tough run-ins, but could it be over by then?

To me, it’s not necessarily the quality of the teams you play, but when you play them, and how their style suits your game*. Then you get into the context of who they’ve just played.

(*In this case, Notts Forest and Man United are often not easy games for Liverpool, and they no longer have to play either again.)

For instance, Liverpool have to go to Man City.

What’s most interesting is that Man City will almost certainly be in the knockout play-offs of the Champions League, which would give them four games in 11 days: first leg, Newcastle home, second leg, then Liverpool at home.

Depending on when the second leg would be (Tuesday or Wednesday, ahead of the Sunday game), who it’s against, and whether home or away, it could leave them caught up in a backlog of effort.

But City could easily find themselves facing a pretty good team in the qualifiers, given how many big clubs are currently outside the top eight.

Meanwhile, Arsenal’s January through to the first two games of February was something I picked out as a breaking point; while Notts Forest have a hellish run of games coming up. If they get dragged back into the qualifying round, they’ll also get an extra workload, in what is already a move from six to eight games.

Liverpool’s underlying numbers are consistently good against all levels of teams, across all competitions. From game to game to game.

In the league, no one bar Liverpool has a per-game xG Difference above +0.79, so creating less than a goal more in xG than conceding.

Liverpool’s is +1.46.

But where it’s staggering is that if you look at the best 18 teams played in the two main competitions (so, all six Champions League games to date and the Big Six, plus the best of the rest), you get this:

72.2% win-rate, and xG Difference (+ 1.33) that almost matches the +1.46 Difference per game in the league, albeit even then, teams like Ipswich and Southampton have yet to venture to Anfield.

Look at the 13 games against the very best of those teams in terms of progressive style, and it’s 84.6% won, and back to the exact league average xG Difference of +1.46. Except this is essentially against European Super League quality opposition: Real Madrid, Man City, Bayer Leverkusen, Arsenal, Newcastle, Chelsea, AC Milan, Spurs and RB Leipzig (who were top of the German league when the Reds went there, seeing as we keep getting told that Liverpool only play teams who are struggling).

But the other factor is, Liverpool’s toughest run of games could be the equivalent of the fifth taker in a penalty shootout.

The ‘5th-Penalty Conundrum’ (A Metaphor!) Could Decide the Title Race

Title races are interesting, aren’t they? The pressure they bring. Newcastle apparently stormed into one, then days later, lost 4-1 at home to Bournemouth, who have no fit strikers.

But Bournemouth, who the Reds play soon, are also clocking up outstanding underlying numbers; it’s just that no one comes close to Liverpool’s, whose excellence in the Champions League (while Arsenal and Aston Villa are both also in the top eight) signals the strength of the league.

My sense is that, Man City aside, the league is far stronger this season, bar, as is becoming the norm, the three promoted sides (which itself shows how tough the league is right now).

The middling sides have almost all recruited elite coaches and bought wisely (including players who would otherwise have gone to big European clubs), with clever systems of play; Bournemouth doing so mostly courtesy of Richard Hughes, before his move to Liverpool.

Hughes, the subject of ire from deranged online Liverpool fans – as he hasn’t signed 100 players yet – happens to have appointed the best two managers in the Premier League right now.

And vitally, avoided the one who just described the club he’s managed for the past two months (33.3% win rate) as the worst in its history.

Before getting onto the bulk of the piece, it’s worth just considering this. Not just who Hughes and co. appointed, but who they did not.

Ruben Amorim would surely have done better with Liverpool’s superior, more versatile squad (and not arriving mid-season), but both he and Ange Postecoglou, as another example (Spurs wanted Arne Slot in 2023 but he turned them down) are so wedded to systems that it’s refreshing to see Slot mix and match, and get the best out of what he has, rather than trying to force Liverpool into a shape or system that’s not suited.

I liked the sound of Amorim last summer, and clearly he’s talented; but just how ‘negative’ his system can be is thing Hughes is said to have spotted.

**This article is for paying TTT Main Hub subscribers only.**