Liverpool threw away two points on Sunday when they allowed a relegation battling Tottenham side to pull level in stoppage time. Despite the draw, though, Arne Slot’s side still manage to end the matchweek in fifth, meaning that if the season were to end today they would qualify for the Champions League.
If they fall a point or two back of that position in the final table, though—or if the Premier League end up with the usual four qualification slots rather than the currently expected five—it will
be games like Sunday’s with dropped points from winning positions to blame, and it’s damning for the head coach that we’re now deep into March and the side still lacks a tactical identity and remains fragile late in matches.
“Of course it’s damaging,” Slot acknowledged following the 1-1 draw when pressed on the potential for those two dropped points to play a role in Champions League qualification. “But it’s how many times this happens that has been damaging for us. We don’t help ourselves at all. It’s so many times this season that we’ve created much more xG or chances than the amount of goals we score.
“Usually in the Premier League you see a lot of teams outperforming their xG, but that definitely is what we are doing. Then a game still stays tight until the end and we struggle to keep clean sheets. We haven’t had as many clean sheets as you would want and that’s a bad combination for picking up points we want.”
While it’s true Liverpool’s finishing has run a little bit cold this season, those hoping that the numbers might balance themselves out in the final weeks should be wary—Chelsea, the side currently battling them for the final Champions League qualification slot, have underperformed their xG by more than Liverpool.
By the numbers, Chelsea have created around ten more expected goals than they’ve scored actual goals so far this season while Liverpool are lagging their expected goals by about six at the moment. Last season, though, it’s also worth nothing that Liverpool ended the year more than seven goals short of where they should have based on their expected goals.
The difference last season is that Liverpool created 93+ expected goals worth of chances as per Understat, while the next best side were Arsenal at around 73+. This season, they’re currently fifth best on 55+, which projects to around 69 expected goals over a season. Their finishing is running slightly colder than last year, then—but the bigger problem is actually that they’re creating less, full stop.
Last season, they created 2.45 expected goals per game on average in the Premier League while scoring an actual 2.26 goals per game. This season, they’ve created 1.84 expected goals per game and scored an actual 1.63. They have also at times seemed to struggle to consistently create high quality, clear cut chances.
Against Tottenham, they had more shots and created more xG, but they did so by taking 17 shots at an average per shot expected goal rate of 0.068 xG per shot. Their best chance was a shot worth 0.15 xG. Come at another way, that means each of Liverpool’s shots had a 6.8% chance of turning into a goal. Their best had a 15% chance.
By comparison, Spurs took 13 shots with an average per shot value of 0.089 (8.9%). Their best chances were worth 0.41 (41%) and 0.34 (34%). Over a season, looking at every Premier League team, expected goals do tend to balance out. All though are discrete actions not impacted by whether the previous shot resulted in a goal or not—or whether the last 16 shots resulted in a goal or not.
As such, in the moment and with the game on the line one would probably prefer seeing a high-value effort (such as Richarlison’s 41% 89th minute equalizer) that gets you to Spurs’ 1.16 overall xG on Sunday rather than a low value effort (such as Hugo Ekitike’s 15% failed effort in the 95th minute to try to win it) that gets you to Liverpool’s 1.30.
And regardless, while it’s true Liverpool are underperforming expected goals this season (as they did last year as well), the bigger problem is that they’re just creating less in attack generally—and they’re creating less generally because the shots they are taking and the chances they are getting are often of fairly low individual quality.
“I think it’s understandable for fans to be frustrated because it happened already so many times this season they’ve seen the home team not picking up the points they’re expecting to,” Slot added. “Now it’s up to us to bring that frustration to Wednesday and come up with a big performance. Because we are all frustrated, that’s completely clear.
“Now it’s up to me and the players to take that frustration into Wednesday and show the fans a performance and the result they deserve, because they’ve been supportive the whole season to us and it happens so many times they are frustrated in the end of a game or after the final whistle, so that makes complete sense to me.”
