Liverpool 4 Notts County 2: Stats Round Up

Although the main providers of Opta stats don't tend to cover the Capital One Cup (until the later stages at least), the official Liverpool site was carrying the figures, so I thought I'd compile them to see who did well and who didn't last night.

Starting with passing, captain Steven Gerrard leads the way with a whopping 108 attempted passes, with an impressive accuracy of 89.8%. The skipper also created six goal scoring opportunities, which was a third of Liverpool's total.

Simon Mignolet's distribution has come into question already during his brief time at Anfield, but with 22 of 28 passes completed, the Belgian stopper was better than he has been in this regard.

Kolo Toure also deserves a special mention, as he didn't misplace a single one of his fifty-three passes in the first half! The Ivorian got to seventy-one passes before sending one astray, which is impressive no matter the quality of opposition.

Looking at shooting, we see that Gerrard and Agger were the main culprits on the profligacy front, though the latter did hit the post:

Interesting that Sturridge, Sterling and Henderson all scored all of their shots on target; more of that efficiency please, lads! Henderson sealed the result with his only shot on the night, and Liverpool have now won seven and drawn one of the eight games that he has scored in.

On the defensive front, Raheem Sterling deserves a lot of credit for the shift he put in:

Top defensive midfielders average around four or five tackles per game, yet the eighteen year old winger attempted eight on the night, winning seven of them.

Overall, I'll give my man of the match award to Daniel Sturridge; the former Chelsea man scored two goals, created a further four opportunities for his colleagues, and maintained a 89% passing accuracy.

Had he played longer, Henderson may well have pipped him to the award (as he won all four attempted tackles, scored his only shot, and created a chance), but Sturridge takes it for me.

The hitman now has fifteen goals in total for Liverpool, at a rate of one every 101 minutes. He has ten goals and two assists in his last eight appearances; Luis who?

Hopefully he can maintain his purple patch for Liverpool's next match: Manchester United at Anfield. The pressure will be significantly greater for that one.

Please check out my other articles, and follow me on Twitter or via Facebook. Thanks.