Diogo Jota: Pressing Monster, Pressing Master

Diogo Jota delivered different things on the ball with Liverpool than he had at Wolves. His pressing remained elite regardless.

I hope everyone is doing well. There will be just one article for paid subscribers rather than two this week, as anything on Diogo Jota will be free to read.

Diogo Jota, Legendary Striker

I don’t tend to revisit my old articles. I don’t know any writer who does (with their own, never mind mine). It’s not the bad takes that frustrate, it’s the poorly written sentences that jar hardest.

I recently made an exception. I was curious to dig out the first things I wrote about Diogo Jota. What sort of player did I think Liverpool had purchased back in September 2020?

The oldest article I could locate talked about his on-ball prowess. The stand out statistic was that he ranked 13th in the Premier League for dribbles completed in 2019/20, with 66. That figure looks anomalous now that we know Jota logged only 22 more across five seasons with the Reds.

It shows the value in looking back at analysis of players. You think you’ll get one thing when you’ll probably get something else. They don’t lose an ability, they just get asked to express themselves differently under a new manager.

Some things remain the same (not just The Song). Jota article number two featured a description he would carry throughout his Liverpool career.

The Portuguese forward debuted for the club in a League Cup tie at Lincoln, meaning Pep Lijnders took the pre-match media duties for the occasion. The coach had this to say about the Reds’ new signing:

"He is a player on the level of the front three technically, a pressing monster… He has been bought to create solutions for us."

This led me to do a little research for the article. “Jota’s average of 22.6 pressures per 90 minutes was more than any Liverpool player managed [in 2019/20]. For players with at least 2,250 minutes, it was the 37^th most in the big leagues across the continent.” He played the Jürgen Klopp way before he even joined the Reds.

A stat regarding his pressing peak emphasised this. “In Wolves’ 1-1 draw with Manchester United in August 2019, Jota made a remarkable 53 pressures. This matches Roberto Firmino’s personal best from the last three seasons… and tops anything the Reds’ other forwards mustered.”

Only once in 2024/25 did a Liverpool player record 53 pressures. It was Dominik Szoboszlai in the 2-0 win at Manchester City, with the effort required leaving the Hungarian sprawled on the Etihad turf at full time. Maybe pressing 53 times in a match is the upper limit of human endeavour.

Checking such statistics was easier when Statsbomb’s data was available on FBRef, prior to their switch to Opta during 2022/23. While I don’t have a complete record for the past five seasons, one thing about Jota is clear: whatever changed in terms of what he did with the ball upon joining the Reds, he remained a ferocious worker without it.

He also gained a master as his tutor. There really isn’t much in common between the tactical outlooks of Nuno Espírito Santo, Jota’s manager at Wolves, and Klopp. You could say they both like to counter attack, it’s just that the former does so starting at the edge of his own box rather than by winning the ball in the final third.

Diogo’s rate for pressures per 90 minutes didn’t really shift once he switched the old gold for red. But he was putting his efforts to use for a side which had much more of the ball, so his possession-adjusted figure rose. By playing in a far more pressure-oriented side, Jota’s success rate improved too.

It’s important to note that for a player to be awarded a successful pressure it only needs their team to regain the ball within five seconds, not them individually. Nonetheless, the Portuguese forward saw his 22.2 per cent success rate in his final season with Wolves grow to 25.3 in his debut Liverpool campaign, then 27.8 the following year.

I’m missing the pressure data for 2022/23. It’s probably no bad thing if you think back to how badly the Reds played for much of that year. Across the seven other campaigns between 2017 and today, Firmino in 2018/19 provides the only instance of as many possession-adjusted pressures per 90 with a higher success rate than Jota in 2021/22.

Bobby scored 12 league goals that season, 16 in all competitions. When Jota near enough matched him for pressing three seasons ago, his figures were 15 and 21 respectively. Neil Atkinson spoke beautifully about Diogo’s importance that season on LFCTV’s tribute programme, the clip of which is here.

Despite his pressing rate dropping in Klopp’s final season, Jota was still ranked 19th in the Premier League for possession-adjusted pressures per 90 among men with at least as much playing time.

In came Arne Slot, who instigated a key tactical change.

Compared with the season before, the Dutchman’s wide forwards pressed with lower intensity while the central striker amped it up. Nobody took this to greater lengths than Diogo.

This didn’t just apply in comparison with his teammates either. Over 250 outfield players recorded at least 1,145 minutes in England’s top division in 2024/25. Of those that did, only former Red Dominic Solanke topped Jota for pressure rate once possession was taken into account. Even then, number 20 outdid the Tottenham forward for similarly adjusted counter pressures.

With Slot looking for central strikers to carry much of the physical, defensive burden for Mohamed Salah, he could’ve asked for few better forwards then Jota. He had his second best league campaign for expected goals per 90 even with the added workload too.

It was a balance he carried from a League Cup tie at Sincil Bank through to holding the Premier League trophy aloft at Anfield. Few players could have done this as well as he did, because combining output with work rate is far from easy.

Diogo Jota. He gave everything.

Diogo Jota, Legendary Striker