Liverpool Turn Insane Underlying Numbers Into Deserved Victory

Bees well and truly buzzed

Paul Tomkins, Andrew Beasley, Daniel Rhodes and other TTT regulars will give their thoughts on the match for 24 hours after the game, so the article received via email is unlikely to be the final version. There's statistics from the match and videos too.

Post-Match Thoughts

Paul Tomkins

Even at 0-0 and losing the Foul Balance -7* yet again with this ref who punishes Liverpool every single time, the Reds were racking up chances, shots, corners, and a ton of xG. (* May instead have been -8, which is even more insane but in keeping with Andy Madley ‘doing’ Liverpool.)

You have these spells, when you get less than you deserve, and Darwin Núñez, in his eagerness as a sub lacking confidence, had taken the ball off a teammate, run into traffic, turned down a blind alley and then shot wildly from a silly distance.

It felt like the final winding down of an exciting career at Liverpool, and the Reds, who had shown all kinds of ideas, were running out of them.

But no! Wait! There’s more!

How many players get not just one but two vital injury-time goals to almost-certainly-win and then kill-off a game? Especially when only four minutes are added, for about 300 subs and the Brentford keeper doing his accounts and organising his work schedule before taking goalkicks?

The subs in midweek got a Liverpool a lucky but deserved immediate goal. There’s no genius in subs immediately scoring, unless Arne Slot and his staff said to Kostas Tsimikas, the other sub, to put the ball on Diogo Jota’s head.

But the subs made a huge difference again; and if on balance they keep doing that, that’s a great sign of management.

Every week Liverpool’s xG Difference – the amount created minus conceded – has been improving, game after game, into the realms of the truly elite, whilst the rivals’ all lag well behind.

So my take, after 89 minutes, was not to panic at this 0-0 draw.

This, like the final 30 at Forest, was a battering with all but a winning goal. A 0-0 was hard to take, but it was also hard to see what more could have been tried, short of sending Alisson Becker up front.

But no! Wait! There’s more!

This was a genuinely record-breaking performance. Loads of records.

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