Fox in the Box? No, Too Slow

Successive goal-less defeats for Liverpool have highlighted a significant penalty box problem for the Reds.

It’s been a bad week for Liverpool. Far from the first in the last nine months.

If the defeat to Paris Saint-Germain was largely expected, the thumping at Manchester City hurt. Marc Guéhi could easily have spent this season with the Reds; he has beaten them five times in four different competitions instead. Thanks, mate.

The whole campaign has been rough for Liverpool when it comes to facing the Cityzens (a club so dislikeable they can’t even spell their own nickname correctly). Deflections, one-off City goal scorers who flatter to deceive, needless penalties and a couple of goals scored within seconds of the Reds’ own throw-ins. As poorly as Liverpool (mostly) played in the three encounters, the aggregate scoreline of 9-1 still feels a little harsh.

A lot of the metrics were reasonably even for the two teams across the 270 minutes. While some of this will be thanks to City happily containing Liverpool in the second half of their home games, most numbers don’t suggest Pep Guardiola’s side merited their six non-penalty goal advantage.

One issue that plagued these matches was also apparent in Paris. Liverpool averaged 2.9 penalty area touches for each of their shots in the box in the 2024/25 Premier League. Let’s call that baseline Arne Slot output. His side posted a figure of 3.6 at Anfield against City, 4.4 in the league meeting at the Etihad and 5.0 in last weekend’s drubbing. The one shot within their nine touches in the European champions’ 18-yard box obviously gave them a mark of 9.0 last time out.

Shots vary in value, these numbers needn’t matter in themselves. What will worry Slot are his three players who are proving particularly inefficient in the box.

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It’s never a good night when the opposition’s centre forward has more touches in your box than your whole team has at the other end. Liverpool players have likely inflicted this treatment on minnows in the past; Ousmane Dembélé, with 10 penalty area touches, achieved the feat against the Reds on Wednesday.

Florian Wirtz’s three made him Slot’s top man. They all led to relatively productive moments on a desperately blunt night for Liverpool too. His first came after receiving a delicious backheeled nutmeg from the otherwise disappointing Hugo Ekitike.

Wirtz was able to retain possession as PSG were kept relatively penned in, with Jeremie Frimpong and Dominik Szoboszlai each attempting a cross in this passage of play. By the standards of the match, this represented a Liverpudlian onslaught.

Less than three minutes later, Wirtz teed up Alexis Mac Allister for a shot.

The former Leverkusen man later had Liverpool’s only shot in the box and final goal attempt of the night. It followed decent work (including the only penalty area touch) by Milos Kerkez.

You’re in trouble when your team’s attacking highlights can be shown in full within two gifs. Yet this was actually a productive outing in box terms for Wirtz, as small a sample as it was. He had one shot from three touches in the box, perfectly in line with the Premier League average over the past two seasons.

This chart shows the players with at least 100 penalty area touches in either 2024/25 or this campaign, plus how many goal attempts they’ve fired off in the box. One eligible player is absent but more on him shortly.

Wirtz is averaging 4.6 touches in the penalty area for every shot he takes within its white lines. That’s the most of the 49 Liverpool players who’ve recorded at least 100 box touches in any of the last 15 Premier League campaigns. The closest to him is the Adam Lallana of 2015/16, whose average was 4.04. Florian is a distant outlier.

He isn’t unusual in Premier League terms. Jeremy Doku’s figure was 8.9 last season, 7.5 this time around. Former Slot player Yankuba Minteh has averaged at least 5.3 in each of his campaigns with Brighton.

Wirtz isn’t likely to be recording take-ons at the same volume level as those players though. His chances created map (below) shows that key passes won’t account for too many of his 108 box touches that were not shots, so what has he been doing in the penalty area?

Alas, it is impossible to know without full access to Opta’s data. Some of the touches will be successful passes that didn’t create chances, or unsuccessful ones that didn’t achieve anything more than eliciting groans from Kopites.

The player not included on the above Premier League chart is the 2024/25 edition of Mohamed Salah. He had an absurd 394 penalty area touches with 119 shots in the box, which broke the scale of the chart. Salah, so far ahead of the competition, forced almost every other player into a tight ball in the bottom left of the graph.

His rate for converting box touches into shots has only dipped by a negligible amount since last term. Salah’s issue is the volume, which has fallen from 10.5 penalty area touches per 90 minutes down to 7.8 in what is now his final Liverpool campaign.

We must also consider Cody Gakpo. Despite his baffling fondness for shooting badly from outside the box, he is averaging more touches per 90 within it this season. His shot frequency has remained stable too. The issue is that his conversion rate for efforts in the penalty area is 12.8 per cent when it was 18.6 per cent in Slot’s first campaign. The diagonal passes from Salah have dried up.

It is the combination of the above factors and players that are proving problematic.

Since the summer of 2011, Liverpool players have averaged 3.03 penalty area touches per shot. Their goal attempts within the 18-yard box have been converted at a 15.5 per cent clip. If you search for Reds who were worse than these parameters, there are over 100. If you limit yourself to players who also had at least 100 touches within the box you only have 11, three of whom are the 2025/26 vintages of Gakpo, Salah and Wirtz.

Whole seasons have passed without a Liverpool player meeting the above criteria. There hadn’t been more than one in campaign since 2011/12, yet three will probably start a must-win game against Fulham on Saturday evening. And remember, the benchmarks for converting touches to shots and shots into goals aren’t remarkable for entry here, merely worse than club average.

Liverpool have taken 4.5 per cent of their touches in opposition penalty boxes this season. It puts them in the 94th percentile of Premier League teams over the last 15 seasons for this particular proportion. This is not a volume problem.

But no Reds team in that period has averaged fewer box shots per touch. They are below league average for the conversion rate of their goal attempts in the penalty area (13.2 per cent versus 14.5), likely in part as their proportion of box shots that are in the six-yard box is also below par (11.9 per cent versus 13.2).

There’s every chance it will not be Slot’s responsibility to fix this problem. Salah’s influence upon it is even more certain to end soon too. Unblocking this penalty box stodginess - itself no doubt impaired by opposition low blocks - would be a significant win for whoever is in charge of Liverpool in 2026/27.