Question Time, Episode Two
How do Liverpool recover from a down season? What's the deal with Kevin Schade? And how much football do English clubs play compared to Champions League rivals?
The chat section of the newsletter contains a thread that is open for anyone to submit a question. You can view the previous entries here, feel free to add one.
The first episode in the Question Time series looked at Arsenal, the partnership between Hugo Ekitike & Alexander Isak (#jinx) and the success of Liverpool’s academy. It’s time to dig into a few more queries.
“Looking back at when Liverpool have struggled during a season, do they bounce back the next year? If so, has there been a pattern of changes made?”
This is an interesting question as we have some very pertinent examples in terms of the Reds’ level of performance, even if the explanation differs from season to season.
Liverpool have 58 points after 34 matches this season. Five years ago they had one fewer at this stage of the campaign, then one more in 2022/23. All three campaigns were disappointing, underwhelming, a struggle. They also all followed either a Premier League title win or a quadruple bid that went further than any before, since or maybe ever will.
The Reds have now finished in the top two of the table before tailing off badly the next season under Gerard Houllier, Rafa Benitez, Brendan Rodgers, Jürgen Klopp and Arne Slot. The club has rarely escaped a slump after a high. The comedowns are upsetting, the hangover lodges right behind your eyes.
The problems of 2020/21 were caused by an injury crisis. The squad didn’t change much before the next season - Gini Wijnaldum out, Ibrahima Konaté in - yet they were able to win two cups, finish second in the league and reach the Champions League final. The mid-season addition of Luis Díaz was useful too.
The demands of 2021/22 partly explain why the club found the next season so difficult. The midfield aged painfully almost overnight. They were replaced ahead of what became Klopp’s final campaign. Though not as impressive a recovery followed in 2023/24 as two years earlier, the Reds were top of the league in early April.
We can put the recent three struggling seasons (very broadly) down to injuries, legs going and a grief-drenched rebuild respectively. The solutions were players returning to fitness, younger players being bought and TBC.
This summer? A little of both solutions from the previous two problematic seasons could come into effect. Richard Hughes and Slot (both also TBC) will hope the players they bought last summer can retain fitness to actually play together, once Ekitike returns. Signing a red hot winger who can go past defenders in the way Mohamed Salah no longer can would measurably help too.
Look back at those former Liverpool managers above. The Reds of Houllier and Rodgers never fully recovered. Benitez left but would’ve struggled to engineer an upturn with the club approaching administration. Only Klopp has steered the ship back on course after hitting the rocks.
Slot’s reputation outside of his homeland may rest on him doing likewise. As a fan of Pep Guardiola, Liverpool’s manager should look to him for inspiration. Manchester City are potential title winners this term after only having 61 points after 34 matches last season.
“Hi mate, did you see Kevin Schade’s shot map this season? Explain that to me please.”
I hadn’t seen it. Having looked it up, I’m interested. Very interested. Maybe Liverpool should be too.
Kevin Schade’s shot map (above) is so interesting because we’ve spent a season watching Cody Gakpo do this:
The two players have been positionally similar to Spider-Man meme levels. Per Opta Analyst, both have spent 16 per cent of their league campaign as a central forward with the rest spent on the wings.
Yet almost all of Schade’s shots have been taken within the danger zone (central section of the penalty box) while Gakpo has repeated his ‘cut in before shooting wastefully’ schtick all season. There must be more reasons than Brentford not facing low blocks with the same frequency as Liverpool to explain the difference.
It isn’t a question of where they receive the ball. Gakpo accepts 10 per cent more of the passes he receives in the opposition half than Schade, 15 per cent more in the final third.
A look at combined shot maps and passes received in Schade’s strongest games for expected goals show that he is often receiving the ball in the centre of the box. The light blue lines on the right side are chances created, yellow are assists (with the same colour denoting goals on the left). He appears strong at being in the right place at the right time.
One other thing stands out in the data. Schade carries the ball a long way for an attacker, an average of 13.7 metres each time. Among players with at least 200 carries this season, only Noah Okafor (14.6m) and Álex Jiménez (13.9) travel further. It may be that whereas Gakpo carries the ball to the edge of the box, Schade crosses the white line.
Whatever the explanation, it’s working. There are only nine players who’ve been as productive for non-penalty expected goals and expected assists across the four seasons that Schade has been in England. Most of them play for the established big clubs too.
The presence of teammate Dango Ouattara suggests there may be a degree of Brentford’s special sauce in the recipe, but with numbers like these Schade looks very capable of playing at a higher level. Liverpool need winger/forwards too.
“How much of an advantage it is for Real Madrid, Barca, Bayern & PSG that they have less to do to win their leagues and are almost guaranteed to qualify each season... it hampers our chances of UCL success that (1) PSG & Bayern play 34 league matches instead of 38 and, (2) the opponent quality of teams from 6 to the bottom of the table is far worse, and (3) those 4 clubs have zero threat of not qualifying for UCL”
This issue is topical following the Champions League semi-finals in midweek.
Everyone loved the freedom with which Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich went at each other in their match. They were able to do so because their top stars play far less football. Before we get to the standard of opposition they face domestically, clubs in France and Germany have four fewer league games (as Stephen noted in his question) and one fewer cup competition to navigate.
Genoa have a Mexican centre-back called Johan Vásquez. He has played a combined 3,877 minutes in the league for his club and in matches for his country this season, the most of anyone in the big five leagues of England, France, Germany, Italy or Spain. Virgil van Dijk (3,735) is next, then if you ignore goalkeepers, Dominik Szoboszlai (3,590) takes bronze.
The Liverpool pair will have topped Vásquez overall as they have European football, but sadly the Transfermarkt data no longer accounts for cup competitions (even though it says it does). Still, if we compare Champions League quarter-finalists, then the top players from the eight clubs should have broadly similar figures there. This will work fine as a guideline.
Wow. I chose a bar of 2,700 minutes as that equates to 30 complete games; raising it slightly to 3,000 leaves five Liverpool players, three Arsenal men (including their goalkeeper) and none for any other club. The Champions League is not a fair fight physically.
The fight is also harder in England, as Stephen noted. Here are the Club Elo ranks of the teams in the big five leagues, by country. See how almost all of the Premier League sides are jammed up into the top 40 whereas every other country has far more than three teams below that.
The competitive nature of English football will have forced Slot’s hand to some extent in terms of repeatedly selecting the same players. The club’s injury situation this season won’t have helped his cause with rotation either. It’s easy to see why PSG and Bayern look fresh when around half of their league games are against Championship standard opposition though.
Hi mate, thank you once again for following up on my question.
Now I‘m even more initrigued by the player. I‘ve read that he is one of the fastest players in the league. He was signed from Freiburg which have a well known academy in Germany, played u21 tournament in 2023 alongside Angelo Stiller but has barely featured in international games since. Curious that.
His superpower seems to be heading. According to Fotmob, 23 of his 51 shots are headers. He is 99 percentile for aerial wins for his position.
For some reason, I can't get access to the question thread but mention of Schade above reminded me of recent rumours of Hughes moving on during the offseason. I'm assuming it would be next man up but who's Hughes next in line?