Everything is Fine
Liverpool haven't been at their best this season. But everything is fine, and not just with the league table.
Are you worried about Liverpool this season? They threw away two goal leads against Bournemouth and Newcastle, with the latter staging their recovery with only 10 men.
The Reds created next to nothing against Arsenal, then needed a stoppage time penalty to beat a Burnley side that is so bad they lost to Manchester United. Four wins out of four is fantastic, but bloody hell, Reds.
With Everton up next in a 12:30 kickoff ahead of trips to Crystal Palace and Chelsea, the league schedule doesn’t get easier. There’s also a trip to Turkey between the latter two fixtures and a likely bruising encounter with Atlético Madrid ahead of the derby.
Liverpool’s performances since the new season began are not reassuring fans that their title defence will be smooth. Mohamed Salah’s non-penalty output per 90 minutes has halved since last season, with his touch largely deserting him. Florian Wirtz has yet to truly get going, Milos Kerkez looks a little overawed and rash, while Alexander Isak has yet to feature, much less start or score.
It will take time for the new-look Reds to gel, with hard work needed for their performance level to return to the high of last term. Will they get there before they run out of last minute winners, if that well hasn’t run dry already?
We can only hope so, it’s impossible to be certain. There are grounds for optimism, though. Plenty of them. Think of this as the ABF version of Ian Dury’s Reasons To Be Cheerful. There’s more than three sections too.
Liverpool have not been behind this season
The Reds conceded some very soft goals in the opening weeks of the campaign. Crystal Palace, Bournemouth (from counter attacks) and Newcastle (set pieces) all scored twice. It’s a good job Federico Chiesa and Rio Ngumoha had their Get Out of Jail Free cards tucked in their shorts for the matches that mattered.
As frustrating as these lapses were, Liverpool have not gone behind. Teams spend longer at 0-0 than any other scoreline, it’s vital to dominate that time. The side that scores first wins around 70 per cent of their matches in the Premier League. Slot’s side were at 84 per cent for this last season, 91 before the title was secured.
For every 90 minutes they spent in goalless games last term, the Reds conceded seven shots worth a combined 0.7 expected goals. This season? 6.8 efforts for 0.6 xG. They are just as solid when it matters most, which provides a fantastic platform. Our next reason for positivity shows why the team will improve further.
Liverpool have had a tough start to the season
It has already been a hugely testing campaign for the Reds. Who were the only team in the top five last season for both possession-adjusted pressures per match and seconds per pressure? Bournemouth. Whose superstar striker were Liverpool trying to poach? Newcastle.
Who wants absolutely nothing to happen in a game of football unless it’s a set play for them, and only then after they’ve taken two weeks to take the damn thing? Arsenal. Which team became just the fifth since the summer of 2021 to line up against the Reds in the ultimate low-block formation of 5-4-1? Burnley.
All challenging games, all tough in different ways. Welcome to the Premier League, which is of higher standard than it has ever been (or at least it was last season).
Those games were not just tricky in their respective contexts. With 34 fixtures remaining, it is far too soon to read much into the difficulty of the run-in. It’s a marathon-in. But based on the points-per-game averages of the teams each club has still to play, at home or away as appropriate, Liverpool have the easiest set remaining.
Plus that’s with the teams the Reds have faced taking no points in that match, don’t forget. Excluding their tussles with Slot’s boys would make them look stronger still by this measure. Random results can inevitably occur, so let’s dig into the underlying numbers.
Liverpool have been marginally better than last season
This is a tough sell. Liverpool lost the expected goal totals 1.0 to 0.7 against a Newcastle side that played a man down for half of the match. That’s bad.
The Reds tied with Arsenal, squeaked by Bournemouth (by 0.5) and battered Burnley. It adds up to an expected goal difference of +0.67 per game, the fourth best in the division. More notable is that it’s effectively half a goal down on last season (+1.15).
It also matches the figure Arsenal posted last season. They have risen to +0.97 this term, fast approaching the benchmark of +1.00 which tends to separate title contenders from the rest.
As we’ve seen, Liverpool have endured a hard start to 2025/26. It’s vital to account for that, so let’s look at the expected goal difference through the lens of the corresponding fixtures.
There has to be a disclaimer or three here. The Reds did not get a penalty in this sample of matches last term. They also had nothing at stake when facing Arsenal this time around, which was not the case at Anfield in August. While there was an opposition red card in both sets of games, Mikel Merino’s occurred 34 minutes after Anthony Gordon was dismissed.
But, hark. The Gunners’ xG difference has dropped by 1.4. The team that looks to be the Reds’ main title challenger has not improved. It’s Manchester City who look more ominous, even if their results have not suggested as much.
Liverpool need to get better, no question. Maybe not by as wide a margin as you perhaps assumed, though.
Liverpool’s new-look attack is taking shape
Hugo Ekitike is the only player to have had more than a single non-penalty big chance this season. Great for him, less so for his fellow attackers. His rate equates to 0.96 per 90 minutes in all competitions, an average only Diogo Jota bettered by more than 0.01 last season.
Among the 36 players with at least 76 such chances in the Premier League since records began, Isak ranks 12th for conversion percentage. Feeding him Ekitike’s frequency of high value opportunities should prove very productive.
The Swede will need to form a good combination with Cody Gakpo. The left forward has already linked up with Ekitike for five chances, with their per 90 rates for shots and xG generated topping anything Liverpool produced in 2024/25. They are also the only combo with two chances created in the opposition danger zone (centre of their box).
Gakpo has started the campaign deceptively. His shot choices at Turf Moor led me to voice my annoyance, both on social media and the latest edition of the Distance Covered podcast. Yet he’s part of the Reds’ most potent partnership, joint-top in the squad for big chances created and only three men in the Premier League have a higher On-Ball Value per 100 touches across the season so far.
The pieces are there in the Liverpool front line, Slot just needs to complete the jigsaw puzzle. With a solid defence behind them, the boss has reasons to be cheerful.
It's still so early. Lots of new players bedding in and the first two months are so stop start with transfer window open and then two international breaks. Really hard to get rhythm going. So I think we're in a good spot when it starts to gel. Think we're a bit light on squad depth though which would be my concern in the 2nd half of the season.
Wildly optimistic? Hopelessly midguided? Or genuine reasons to think everything will be okay?