Liverpool 2025/26: Born In An Offside Position

Alex Ferguson's old line about Pippo Inzaghi sadly applies to the Reds this season.

How do you know when a team’s attack isn’t working? This isn’t the start of a joke, as funny as it will be to rival supporters.

A good indication for a stuttering offence would be a high offside count. It’s indicative of players not being attuned to the same train of thought, with forwards also not paying enough attention to the opposition’s defensive line.

Liverpool lead the 2025/26 Premier League for offsides, with 49. Their rate per game of 2.33 isn’t horrendous by historical standards. Manchester City won the 2018/19 title with 2.58 offsides a match, while Jürgen Klopp’s final Reds posted 2.63 when in the championship running for most of the 2023/24 season.

The greater issue this term is that when Liverpool rack up offsides there seems to be no stopping them. Over zealous assistant referees, your honour? It might be a possibility if they didn’t tend to wait until an attack is concluded before flagging these days.

Whatever the cause, the Reds have been caught offside at least six times in four of their previous 12 league matches. No team has done this in more than five games in any completed Premier League campaign since 2014.

The worst individual performance was delivered by Mohamed Salah at Manchester City. He became the only player to be flagged offside four times in a Premier League match for any club so far this season. It is Cody Gakpo who has been the most frequent offender overall though.

These figures undermine the initial thought that the high offside count has been thanks to multiple new attackers. It is the old guard who have erred most of all, on both sides of the equation. Creating chances is about players combining which is also pertinent here. As with any metric, the pitch location is hugely relevant too.

Before we get to that, another point for concern. Liverpool’s offside rate was initially two per game but has risen to 2.8 since the team underwent it’s de-Salah-fication. The Reds’ more cautious style has made them worse for offsides, giving Arne Slot yet another stumbling block to overcome.

Finding a cause for the high offside count is not easy in this of all seasons, especially as the data has to be collated manually. If you’re waiting for an in-depth comparison against other seasons, forget it. We can still test a theory.

Desperation thanks to circumstance is a logical starting point. Liverpool have led for 15 minutes longer than they’ve trailed in 2025/26. However, the offside tally is just one higher for losing than for winning. With the rates per 90 minutes only being 0.2 either side of the overall average, straying beyond the opposition’s last man hasn’t been a game state issue.

If we ignore 0-0 as it represents by far the biggest chunk of the scoreline time, Liverpool have been offside more times at 2-0 (seven) than at any other score. Even though it’s a position they’ve reached in nine matches, so relatively regularly, you would think the team would be more relaxed with a two-goal cushion.

As only three of those matches ended 2-0 - with Liverpool still yet to lead by three goals in the league this season - it perhaps explains any anxiety when holding that advantage. Overreaching for the sanctuary of a 3-0 lead may have caused an offside or two.

The chart for player involvement showed that Dominik Szoboszlai has played the most offsides passes with Gakpo the most frequent recipient. Their combination is the only one to have generated more than two in 2025/26, with their four pictured here.

These images also conveniently help highlight where Liverpool’s offside passes have been most frequently received: 14 in the centre of the box, 10 to the left of the penalty area.

To go a little early in-between the width of the six-yard box is inevitable at times. If you’re not trying to interfere with play, what the hell are you doing there? This group of offsides includes Andy Robertson’s hugely controversial one at the Etihad, though, which shows interference can be a matter of opinion.

(As an aside, for the Robertson incident to be recently deemed one of the 15 “mistakes on the field which the KMI Panel felt did not reach the threshold for a VAR intervention” this season is beyond ridiculous. Isn’t the point of VAR to adjudicate on whether a goal is valid or not? Intervening is why you exist).

Either way, you can’t really deem offsides in the most valuable area of the pitch to be an issue. It would be a greater concern if there were none. You need forwards making a move, taking a risk. They won’t all pay off, it’s inevitable.

Apologies for coming across like the mainstream media, but if there’s a problem here, it’s the left.

If you plot the start and end point of Liverpool’s 49 offside passes, the most common pairing is left flank (defined as beyond the width of the box) to left flank, with six. None of them were fashioned by Gakpo with Milos Kerkez; this might suggest they’ve been working well together when the likelier explanation is that they don’t pass to each other enough.

Liverpool’s left flank offsides this season

These are mostly short passes, which suggests the receiving player - Gakpo, Robertson (both twice), Kerkez and Chiesa (one apiece) - should have been able to remain onside. Apparently they were not.

Without being able to check easily, it’s hard to imagine this being a problem during Klopp’s best years. The trio of Robertson, Sadio Mané and Gini Wijnaldum worked so well together that offsides were far less common. Gakpo is already just one shy of Mané’s total in 2019/20 while Szoboszlai is one behind the combined offside pass total by the aforementioned trio that season.

The Reds of 2025/26 only need four more offsides to match the total that the club’s first Premier League title winners amassed across 38 games. Their season to date suggests there’s about a 25 per cent chance they accumulate them against Burnley on Saturday.

If it happens, it’ll be further evidence that the team’s attack isn’t working. Knock knock, Arne.