Liverpool Attack on the Counter Better than Any Team Ever

Jürgen Klopp's Liverpool were masters of counter attacking. The Premier League data says Arne Slot's Reds are even better.

The crowd was up, the party had started. A goal down, the visitors resumed play, only to lose the ball within moments. It was 2-0 less than 30 seconds later. Bang bang, just not necessarily ‘you’re dead’.

Liverpool killed off Arsenal in the title race long ago. Last weekend it was time to emphasise their dominance in a match that didn’t even matter to them. Scoring again quickly would’ve swiftly rekindled memories of the famous 5-1 win in 2014.

You’d think the Gunners would’ve learned a lesson from the previous passage of play, but no. After both goals, Martin Ødegaard kicked off by playing the ball back to David Raya, only for him to go long to the left flank without finding a teammate. It was mildly more successful the second time in that they won a throw-in, at least.

The ball made it’s way to Mikel Merino on the edge of the Liverpool box, who took a shot that was so obviously going to be blocked it may as well have been your details on your ex’s mobile. An immediate counter-attack was launched, with Curtis Jones seeing a shot saved just 13 seconds later.

Imagine if he’d scored. The Reds would have gone from goalless to 3-0 up in exactly four minutes, with the ball in play for comfortably less than half of that. Arsenal likely fold in this scenario, which later allows Jarell Quansah to come on for Conor Bradley. It would’ve left us to ask Trent Alexander-Arnold-who? rather than to Trent Alexander-Arnold-BOO.

The sequence for Jones’ goal attempt brought to mind a Hudl article from two weeks ago on ball carrying, as both the shooter and Luis Díaz had dribbled up field within the move.

“I thought it could be interesting to see how these [carrying] numbers looked for players within a team: Liverpool, the team who generate the most counter attacking shots in the league,” wrote Lily Wood-Blake, before sharing this chart.

The hudlstatsbomb data likely doesn’t match Opta’s statistics perfectly, but they are in agreement that the Reds are the Premier League’s leading side for shots following counter attacks (a.k.a ‘fast breaks’). Per WhoScored, Liverpool are also ahead of any team from France, Germany, Italy or Spain for good measure.

More significantly, they have scored 14 goals, 19 in all competitions. The league figure is at least four more from counters than any other team in the last 16 seasons of top flight football in England, creating a suspicion that Opta have eased their definition for this pattern of play.

There were 665 Premier League shots deemed to be from fast breaks across Jürgen Klopp’s first three full seasons in England, just 17 more than the 2024/25 campaign has seen with two weeks remaining. Even if it’s easier than ever before to record a statistically-defined counter attack, it’s worth looking at who has been most involved in creating or shooting them for Liverpool. Four men have broken quickly from the rest of Arne Slot’s pack.