Liverpool's Big Chances. Part One: The Attack

Welcome to 2:1, a mini-series on how Liverpool fared with Opta-defined big chances at both ends of the field in 2024/25.

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Liverpool’s attack in 2024/25 was much more efficient than it had been in Jürgen Klopp’s final campaign. The Reds needed an additional 142 shots to generate the extra 5.2 expected goals they produced in the 2023/24 Premier League. Was it worth it?

Arne Slot honed the attacking process to become more patient, which delivered higher quality goal scoring opportunities. This was evident in his side’s record for big chances, which are defined by Opta as per the below.

Liverpool amassed 208 of these golden opportunities in all competitions last season, allowing 104 in return. 2:1 isn’t just a song by Elastica in Trainspotting, it’s also a very healthy ratio between attacking and defensive metrics.

We’ll be looking into the back end of the team in the next section of this two-part series. For now, we’ll focus on this fact: The Reds’ total of 144 big chances in the Premier League set a new record for the competition since records began in 2011.

Opta may have relaxed their big chance definition. The record in total across the top flight prior to 2022/23 was 1,485, in 2019/20. There were then 1,559 three years ago, before the tally rose rapidly to 1,820 in 2023/24 then 1,847 last season. Even if Slot’s Liverpool benefitted statistically from this trend, they’re clearly one of the elite attacking units of English football’s enlightened era.

The Reds converted their big chances at a slightly below average rate for the fourth time in the previous five league seasons to undermine their creative potency. Across all competitions, with penalties excluded, they were even worse.

This is impossible to control. Such things inevitably fluctuate from player to player, year to year. They vary by game state too; Liverpool converted more of their non-penalty big chances when losing (47.1 per cent) than when level (34.1) or winning (32.9) last season.

This makes no sense, as finishing should be more difficult when trailing. Randomness is always a factor. As the champions lead for far longer than they trail, regression to the mean across all three game states would be a decent trade off.

The Reds’ attack is about to evolve. A deal is on the verge of completion for Hugo Ekitike, a talented yet somewhat wasteful forward. It has been highlighted that Liverpool didn’t rely upon their central striker for goals last term. This was because the players in that position wasted good opportunities, not because they didn’t have any.

Will this now shift with Florian Wirtz guaranteed to start almost every game? The changes in the full-back positions will also have an impact given their creative value in the past. We need to establish what Slot’s Liverpool did in 2024/25 before we can speculate about what might happen in future.