Solving the Void in Liverpool's Attack

Liverpool's expected goal numbers in the Premier League are elite this season. It's what has happened afterwards from a certain position that causes concern.

Liverpool will probably win the league on Sunday. There’s a line to set you up for a great weekend. According to an expected goals powered prediction model, there’s around an 86 per cent chance the Reds get the point they need to wrap up the title against Tottenham Hotspur.

The Liverpool of 2024/25 are disproving the old adage that defense wins championships, just as many sides did before them. They and Arsenal have conceded a similar level of goals, both expected and actual. The difference has come from the Gunners not keeping close to the pace up front.

The champions elect are on course to wrack up 75 non-penalty expected goals this season. Only five sides across the previous seven seasons of Premier League football reached this benchmark, all of them wearing the colours of Liverpool or Manchester City. Those sides didn’t play in a division that is quite as strong either.

There is one notable thing which separates the attack of Arne Slot’s Reds from those of champions past: they are only converting goals at about the par rate.

When Liverpool won the league five years ago, they did so in part thanks to scoring 13 non-penalty goals more than Opta’s xG model suggested they should. The closest a title-winning City side has got to underachieving in attack came when they were 6.7 goals up in 2018/19. Yet with five games remaining in their certain-to-be championship campaign, the Reds are just 0.8 above their npxG. It doesn’t matter, it’s just a bit weird.

It’s notable that no member of the squad is as much as two goals from expectation, for good or bad. They’re all bumbling along, scoring about as many as they should. Fifteen clubs in the division have at least one player who is exceeding their non-penalty xG by more than Liverpool’s top man, 13 possess someone out-stinking their bottom dweller.

Thankfully for Slot, he only has three men who are scoring at a rate worse than one goal below their underlying numbers. What is strange is that they all play in broadly the same position, creating something of a void in the Liverpool attack. Before you start trying to name the culprits, Darwin Núñez isn’t one of them.