Liverpool Have Best Underlying Numbers in Premier League AND Champions League

This is sustainable!

Five clear at the top of the league, with one of the best Premier League starts in history, overseen by a new manager, Arne Slot, making literally the best overall start in English football history (because he’s also won both cup games, against Premier League teams, and more importantly, all four tough Champions League games, and already have a two-point lead).

Look at the table for combined Premier League and Champions League form, results and underlying numbers:

This is it; this is now.

This is the moment we’ve been waiting for.

This is the season; live it.

Stop worrying about next season.

What really pisses me off is the way the word “embarrassing” that has crept into football in terms of worrying what others might think (which is the entire point of embarrassment, as it always relates to the perceptions of others).

It’s almost a social media mindset, as if all that counts is worrying about how you might be trolled. And worrying about a future that is beyond the limit of what matters most. (Not to be confused with the life-affirming What Matters Most, about the sudden death of a friend.)

I’ve written recently about people’s inability to just enjoy football and drag others down with fears. Yet still people do it.

I’ve soft-banned all talk of the Reds’ Contract Trio and reiterated that about 15 times now, unless there is definitive news. Untether yourself from the clickbait and bullshit.

At this point I don’t care who has signed or not signed; none of us know what is or isn’t taking place behind the scenes, or who wants what, or who is being offered what.

On the site last night I had enough with someone who said it’s “embarrassing” that Liverpool have not signed Salah up to a new deal.

Stop it. Now. Even if the worst happens, it happens next season.

Is it affecting Mo Salah’s form this season? Ditto Virgil van Dijk.

That question answers itself, as does the history of final-season ‘over-performance’ as a phenomena. Virgil van Dijk has been outstanding. They may stay, they may go. We’ll see.

The entire point of football is to enjoy the games in front of us, and to try to win trophies or win as many games as is possible.

While clubs need to plan ahead, we, as fans, do not.

Liverpool are having one of the all-time great first 17 games to a season; and people are embarrassed?

I will not have the joy this season ruined by the fear of something that may or may not happen in the summer of 2025, and the constant boring talk about it.

If Salah scores 50 goals this season and leaves next summer for free as the fresh champion of something major with the Reds, that sounds like a win, after all he’s delivered, and what he will have delivered in his 33rd year. He’d get a lovely presentation and a huge farewell. But why worry too much about it now?

It’s like winning £10m in the lottery and being depressed and bringing everyone down because – what a bummer! – you now have to pay £2m (or whatever it is) in tax. I don’t watch football to obsess about who will arrive each summer and who might depart.

Let’s revel in what Liverpool are doing, as, for the past dozen years, finishing 2nd to Man City was usually – bar one season – the best outcome domestically.

(Prior to 2015 in the modern era, it would be maybe one or two great seasons per decade, going back to 1990, and zero league titles, with one Champions League in 2005.)

Only once since 1992 have Liverpool started a league season better. Feel it. Live it. Forget next season.

History

Beez shared this (below) on the best starts to league seasons since 1992 on the post-match thread, but what Liverpool have done this season is also face AC Milan, Bologna, Leipzig, Bayer Leverkusen, West Ham and Brighton.

Extend these start to the Champions League as well (and the League Cup), to look at the Cumulative Effort, and the effect on results, and:

Of these best starts, Man City drew 0-0 in the League Cup in 2017/18, but did win their first five Champions League games, albeit against Napoli, Feyenoord and Shakhtar Donetsk teams that were not even remotely comparable to Leverkusen in 2024.

Still, that was arguably the best-ever City side, aided by stuff removed at behest of shadowy figure lurking outside my window.

In 2011/12, they won their League Cup games, but drew with Napoli and lost to Bayern Munich within their first two Champions League games. So, not as good as Liverpool in 2024/25.

Chelsea in 2005/06 were about to lose their 12th league game, but also won only two of the four Champions League games, including drawing with Liverpool and losing 1-0 at Real Betis. So, not as good.

Liverpool in 2019/20 had the best-ever start to an English top-flight season up to the 27th game, with 26 wins and a draw, but drew with Arsenal in the League Cup (5-5!) and lost the first Champions League game 1-0 at Napoli, before winning the next three, albeit two were against Genk.

(And I was at the 4-3 win over a RB Salzburg squad featuring Erling Haaland, Dominik Szoboszlai, Taki Minamino, Karim Adeyemi, Hwang Hee-chan, Patson Daka and Benjamin Sesko, albeit most were quite young at the time, and some weren’t involved. Haaland came on as a sub and scored.)

Arsenal in 2022/23 lost at home to Brighton in the first League Cup game, and weren’t even in the Champions League; so you can’t compare playing your kids in the Europa League against Bodø/Glimt and Zürich.

Man City in 2018/19 were about to lose league games 16, 18 and 19, as a warning of how good starts can falter (before they famously pipped the Reds 98-97 on league points). They won their League Cup games, but lost to Lyon in the opening Champions League game. As such, they too fall below Liverpool’s 2024/25 body of work so far.

Newcastle in two mid-‘90s seasons certainly never dominated in Europe. In 1994/95 they were eliminated from the UEFA Cup after their 4th game ended in defeat. They were not even in Europe in 1995/96 (the season in which I scored a half-time penalty in the famous 4-3 win against them).

The two Man United seasons, 2006/07 and 1993/94, saw them lose to Copenhagen in the first season (the 4th Champions League tie), after Southend United knocked them out of the League Cup; and in 1993/94 they lost their first League Cup game, to Stoke City, and in the old knockout format, were eliminated after failing to beat Galatasaray in games three and four.

So no one, bar absolute-peak City in 2017/18, can hold a candle to this overall Liverpool season so far.

Machine

As in 2019/20, Liverpool are starting to open up a deserved lead on City, and it was extended between games 10-15.

Past performance doesn’t guarantee future performance, as things can change; but underlying numbers can tell where a team may be headed.

For example, I noted before the weekend that Man City, since Rodri’s injury, were averaging almost full two xG Against in the games against everyone but the very worst teams, and that meant data including the mighty Bournemouth, Fulham and even Wolves away.

Basically, City were close to losing every game, on average, 2:1 on the xG, even with Bournemouth, Fulham and Wolves away.

Indeed, they averaged 1.6 goals for, from 1.6xG in those games; and averaged 2.0 goals against, from 1.96xG Against.

City, by completely mirroring their underlying numbers, now looked like the kind of team who would draw 2-2 or lose 2-1.

So, how did the weekend go? 🤔

(Unless they are playing Slovan Bratislava, Sparta Prague or Southampton, in which case, they will still flat-track bully them.)

By contrast, Liverpool have played no one as bad as Southampton at home.

Indeed, none of the bottom nine as things stand on Sunday morning have come to Anfield yet, and no one as bad as Slovan Balaclava or Spurty Prague have been faced in Europe.

The closest Liverpool have come to ‘losing’ a game on xG is by the fractional 0.1xG at Arsenal. The other 16 games all saw Liverpool have the better xG Difference.

In the “we’ll find out how good they are when they play someone decent” run of seven games, against Chelsea, RB Leipzig, Arsenal, Brighton, Brighton, Leverkusen, Aston Villa, the Reds averaged:

• 2.00xG created

• 1.01xG Against

• 52.71% possession

• 2.71ppg

• xG Difference of +0.99 per game, or essentially one goal better than their opponents.

Even now, 17 games in, in all competitions, the Reds have not conceded more than 1.4xG in a game.

City, still the closest rivals, have conceded 2.0 or more so against Sporting CP, Fulham, Brighton and Bournemouth (and 1.6 vs Newcastle).

To contrast, Liverpool conceded more than 1.5xG Against last season in 27.5% of the 40 included games (excluding the Europa League games bar Atalanta, as they don’t compare, as kids playing against weak sides).

And of the 11 times it happened, the teams included Crystal Palace, Crystal Palace again, Brentford and Brentford again.

With 1.4xG Against the most so far this season, last season also included three games with over 3.0 conceded: Arsenal away (-3.5), Atalanta at home (-3.2) and Aston Villa away (-3.1).

Again, while things can change, consistently good underlying numbers is more sustainable than wildly erratic numbers, which was a bit more the case last season; albeit with the caveats of an entire new midfield settling in, injuries rising to a dozen (it’s ‘just’ half a dozen now, not that they ever get mentioned), some abysmal red cards against the Reds and a disallowed 5-yards onside goal, and then the weirdness around a tired Jürgen Klopp leaving.

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