Alexis Mac Allister Sums Up Liverpool's Problem This Season
Alexis Mac Allister had perhaps his best game of the season at Arsenal but has been below par in a way that has spread throughout the team in 2025/26
There are many ways to measure what a player or team does in a match. As the saying goes, not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. But even if you hadn’t watched a second of Liverpool in either season under Arne Slot, the data would highlight the two ‘teams’ from each campaign are not at the same level.
Statistics are more useful at assessing attackers than defenders. Mohamed Salah’s output has crumbled into the sea since 2024/25 whereas Ibrahima Konaté looks at about the same level in the numbers. Neither man will be proud of their campaign as things stand, although the latter has been much better of late.
What about the men in the middle? Dominik Szoboszlai has been the Reds’ player of the season so far, with Curtis Jones growing in importance almost weekly. The one central cog last season who has disappointed throughout 2025/26 is Alexis Mac Allister.
It is hard to pinpoint the cause. Injured at the end of last season, he then lost some fellow South Americans through transfers, another teammate in tragic circumstances and became a father for the first time. Nobody could blame him if his head was scrambled in the second half of 2025.
Data can put Mac Allister’s downturn into context, whatever the explanation. Hudl Statsbomb have a metric called On-Ball Value (OBV) which measures player’s performance in four aspects: defensive actions, dribbles and carries, passing and shooting.
Salah was unsurprisingly Liverpool’s leading man last season, with an OBV score of 16.84, ahead of Trent Alexander-Arnold (11.50) and Luis Díaz (9.11). Mac Allister, with 7.88, was next.
Where the Argentine truly shone was in being an all-rounder. To assess this, it makes sense to weight the figures by how involved each player was. Mac Allister hit a minimum of 0.06 OBV per 100 touches for all four aspects of the metric last season. As low as that bar sounds, only seven other players in the Premier League did likewise. Two of them barely played while only Bryan Mbeumo of the other five got within 750 touches of the Liverpool midfielder’s total.
If you’re looking for the best footballers in the Premier League, this won’t show you. If you want to find players who were integral to their team in every different facet of the game, it should put you in the ballpark. The key men without being the star men, perhaps.
Mac Allister does not fare as well in this data this season. He has been largely peripheral, unable to influence games. He is not alone among the Reds’ squad in seeing an OBV drop, though, with one aspect pointing to exactly where Liverpool need to improve.
Having delivered an on-ball value of 0.40 per 100 touches last term, Mac Allister is down at just 0.08 in 2025/26. He is not helped by his shot score being -0.11 but then only two players in the Premier League have amassed more xG without scoring this season.
If that is not unusual for a midfielder who mostly trades in low value chances, the drop in impact for Mac Allister’s passing is harder to stomach. His average was 0.09 pass OBV per 90 minutes in 2024/25, yet he has only hit that mark in four league matches so far this season.
This could be explained by Mac’s passes per 90 dropping a touch when Liverpool are attempting slightly more per game. It’s hard to be as influential when you have a smaller slice of the passing pie. Even so, it’s fair to question what he’s adding to the side if his contributions on the ball are relatively minimal.
Digging into the data reveals that the former Brighton man is merely part of a much graver problem for the Reds. Fantasy Football Scout carries OBV data for the last three Premier League seasons, giving us a 60-team sample. If we rank them by passing OBV per match, the Liverpool sides of 2023/24 (with a score of 1.07) and 2024/25 (0.96) are the top two.
The current crop are down in 24th, on 0.69. Forget best in the sample, they’re only eighth in 2025/26. While their percentage drop on last season is greatest in the shot OBV department, finishing is fickle. If you can’t build up with the ball as effectively, which they are not, then your chances are likely harder to score anyway.
As with Mac Allister’s passing, the team aren’t even hitting their 2024/25 average in most matches this term. This issue has been somewhat brought to a head by the stodgy football the team have played of late. In truth, this problem has dogged them throughout the campaign.
This being football in 2026, we have to play the blame game. Who else alongside Mac Allister has seen a shift since last season? Have the new signings come close to making up what was lost through the players that are no longer at the club?
While it was natural that Alexander-Arnold would be missed, Kostas Tsimikas’ impact (in a smaller sample) was less obvious. At the other end of the scale, Hugo Ekitike has contributed less than Darwin Núñez, with Alexander Isak balancing out Diogo Jota.
Credit has to go to Jeremie Frimpong for his efforts, albeit he needs to stay fit to deliver this level regularly. Far more would have been anticipated than has been delivered by Milos Kerkez. What should we expect when as he hasn’t been asked to play in the manner in which he made his name at Bournemouth though? We could say similar regarding expectations for Florian Wirtz, who is at least at the level of 2024/25 Mac Allister and above last season’s Szoboszlai.
Speaking of the handsome Hungarian, he has improved this season, as have Conor Bradley and Joe Gomez (in his tiny amount of playing time). It seems the right flank is holding up reasonably well for pass value in the post-Trent era.
One possibility was that Bradley, Frimpong and Kerkez would be more use as carriers than passers. We have seen some good examples of this from the Northern Irishman in the last two games. Bradley dribbled up field to assist Wirtz at Fulham, then made a similar run in the move that led to him hitting the Emirates crossbar. We can only hope his injury isn’t too serious.
And perhaps Mac Allister’s performance at Arsenal was a hint of him returning to his best. It is at least now clear in which way he needs to improve on the ball, with most of his teammates needing to up their game too.
I agree on the eye test. Whether Macca had a pre-season or not I think Curtis is playing better and deserves to start ahead of Mac Allister. Yet at Arsenal he did not. So the question is why does Slot keep picking him if he's lacking in fitness? He's on track to play as many minutes as last season. Is he Slot’s undroppable midfielder?
So, thinking from Slot’s perspective is Mac Allister’s “decline” entirely a decline in performance, or partly a decline in measurable value driven by his role? If OBV captures impact rather than importance, is it possible Mac Allister is now being asked to suppress risk rather than create it? The value may not be disappearing so much as being redistributed — with Szoboszlai and Wirtz the beneficiaries.
Yet he put in a good performance against Arsenal but Slot himself suggested against certain styles the team struggle. To me he's looked jaded and slow in a fair few games. He's also lost three mates over the summer so he could be feeling unsettled. Maybe Arsenal will be a boost but Curtis looks the better all rounder in the same role - but Slot keeps picking Macca.
Great stuff Andrew. OBV seems a good model & is another datapoint that matches the eye test re: underperforming XI from last season, i.e. Mo, Macca & Ibou. Ryan's OBV variance was surprising given his increase in goals though most of them were from low xG value stats.
Peak Macca OBV would likely = elite contributions in passing & shooting (late runs into great areas) vs. CM peers. You're right to point out all of the change in his personal life that likely had an impact. Sadly because he's got such a good "football brain", Macca is the one most likely to move on in the new 1-2 seasons as Ryan, Dom & Curt are younger, bigger & better athletes.