Newcastle 0 Liverpool 6: Stats Round Up
Whenever the Reds have a big win I like to summarise the key statistics, and their emphatic victory at St James Park is no exception!
Prior to the game, Liverpool's starting XI had scored 28 league goals between them this season, just five more than the absent Luis Suarez.
Daniel Agger's quick fire opener means that Liverpool have scored five goals within the first five minutes of a league match this season, which is the equal most with the two Manchester clubs.
Jordan Henderson scored two goals, and the Reds are unbeaten (winning six and drawing one) in the seven games when the former Mackem has found the net.
Daniel Sturridge scored and assisted a goal for the second game in a row, and for the third time in just eight Premier League starts for Liverpool.
Both Sturridge and Henderson scored two goals and assisted another in the match.
Only thirteen Premier League players have scored a higher percentage of their shots than Jordan Henderson has this season (23%, minimum of fifteen shots attempted).
Stewart Downing created five chances against Newcastle. Top chance creators average about three per game.
Before Coutinho had started a game for the Reds this season they averaged 1.19 accurate through-balls per game; since the Brazilian has started, Liverpool average 2.44 per game.
The former Inter Milan player threaded three accurate through balls against the Geordies; the Premier League's best player for this skill (Santi Cazorla) averages 0.9 per game.
Ten different players had a shot and/or created a chance for the Reds today, with six scoring and/or assisting a goal. Total football!
Lucas Leiva attempted an incredible eleven tackles against the Magpies, missing out on the record for the Premier League this season by just one. Coincidentally, the record (which is held by Pablo Zabaleta) was achieved at St James Park.
Newcastle attempted nineteen tackles in total, meaning Lucas matched 58% of his opposing team's tackle tally on his own.
The Reds have now scored four-or-more goals in six league games this season, and five-or-more on four occasions. Both feats are new records for Liverpool in the Premier League era.
With three games still to play, the Reds have only scored more goals in five of the previous twenty completed seasons. Five goals in their remaining matches would make this Liverpool's second highest scoring Premier League campaign.
The clean sheet secured at St James Park mean the Reds have now shut out their opponents in fourteen league games this season, the second most in the division. That's already two more than last season, and the same in total as the season before.
Pepe Reina now has five clean sheets in his last seven league appearances.
Remarkably, Liverpool scored six goals from just nine shots on target. In the recent Reading game for instance, the Reds failed to score despite having eleven shots on target.
Liverpool now have two points more than last season's final total, and have won eight more points than they got from the corresponding fixtures in the last campaign.
This was only the second league game that Luis Suárez has missed this season (the other being the 3-2 win at West Ham) and remarkably Liverpool have scored nine goals from seven different scorers in those two games.
The Reds are now unbeaten in their last five league games, and only eleven of the other ninety-seven teams in Europe's big five leagues can currently better that.
Liverpool have now won nine league games by three-or-more goals this season, more than any other team in the division (Arsenal have won the second most, with six).
To finish, a look at the league table since Coutinho first started a league game for the Reds. It's far too small a sample to draw any serious conclusions from of course, but it suggests that with the Brazilian and Daniel Sturridge on board and a squad approaching what Brendan Rodgers will be looking for, Liverpool might well be heading in the right direction.
Related articles you might like:
Liverpool 5 Swansea 0 Stats Round Up - All the key numbers from another superb Liverpool result.
Liverpool 5 Norwich 0 Stats Round Up – Lots of impressive numbers following a fantastic performance by the Reds.
Statistics sourced from EPLIndex. Please check out my other articles, and follow me on Twitter or via Facebook. Thanks.