Stat of the Match: Milan 1-3 Liverpool
Liverpool recovered from a bad Premier League loss with a great Champions League win. Arne Slot's side gave 18 reasons why they should be taken seriously.
Liverpool put the disappointing defeat to Nottingham Forest firmly behind them with a dominant display in winning 3-1 against Milan at the San Siro. That outcome did not look on the cards when Christian Pulisic gave the hosts the lead in just the third minute.
The Reds of 2024/25 are build of stern stuff though. It’s important not to lose sight of that whenever they come unstuck. As poor as Arne Slot’s side were against Forest, the visitors only had five shots, at least one of which was flagged offside after the event. Liverpool do not give up much to the opposition - 3-0 up at Old Trafford, aside - which will always give them a chance in a game.
The first two goals came from set pieces, a method of goal scoring which has been key to title challenges of the past. On the four occasions the Reds finished first or second in the Premier League in the last decade, they scored at least 17 goals from dead ball situations. Effective set plays can dig a side out of some very unpleasant holes.
Even so, a post match comment from Slot suggests he’s aiming to set records in this field. “I think we were a bit disappointed with the result against Nottingham Forest [but] we were also disappointed from getting eight corner kicks and not scoring, but we were very close,” he said (via the club website). Liverpool needed an average of 23.3 corners per goal to score 77 times from such situations across the last seven league seasons, the most of any side in the division.
The Reds came very close to scoring before Ibrahima Konaté equalised from Trent Alexander-Arnold’s free-kick. Six minutes earlier, Mohamed Salah had struck the woodwork, with Kostas Tsimikas skewing a shot well off target in the chaos which followed.
By the time Milan took another shot to bring their match tally to three, the Greek left-back had taken that many himself. They all missed the goal, were from at least 14 yards out with none of them worth more than 0.06 expected goals, per FBRef, but let’s hear it for Kostas. You be you, mate. He clearly thought the San Siro was a grand stage befitting his first goal for the club.
At full time, Liverpool had taken 23 shots, one shy of the most Milan have conceded in the last nine years on home turf. The Reds’ figures of 3.1 non-penalty expected goals and 11 shots on target have only both been matched-or-bettered by away teams nine times in the last seven years of Champions League football. Two of them were by the Reds themselves, though this game was only the second instance by any club when facing a team from one of Europe’s big five leagues.
Impressive numbers, all. There are many ways to amass such tallies, though, which is where Liverpool’s efforts in Milan prove so interesting.
Slot’s side went behind, then conceded a blocked shot to Tijjani Reijnders 11 minutes later. Salah’s first woodwork rattler of the night began a run of 18 unanswered shots, until Reijnders had an off target effort from 27 yards almost an hour later.
This is a tough figure to put into context, the crucial bedrock of any statistic. Liverpool dominate a lot of games in the big two competitions but do they do so as emphatically without suffering a punch or two from the opposition in return?
Rarely. In 2021/22, the Reds’ best match for consecutive shots was a 3-0 victory over Crystal Palace at Anfield, in which they had 16 without reply. The following season, the best run of unbroken Liverpool goal attempts occurred at Ibrox, with six of the 17 providing goals in a 7-1 win.
The 18 in Milan was topped twice in Jürgen Klopp’s final campaign, in extraordinary circumstances in different ways each time. In a 4-2 win over Newcastle, the Reds set a Premier League record for expected goals. That’s not an attacking performance likely to be regularly repeated.
The other occasion was Klopp’s 491st and final game at the helm. With neither side having anything at stake, Anfield in celebratory mood and Wolves down a man early, the Reds were able to create more or less whatever they wanted.
That was not the case on Tuesday evening. After Liverpool drew level with Milan with their third shot of the evening they simply kept on going. The Reds of Arne Slot are unlikely to match their predecessors for total attempts per game, but having unbroken streaks of shots should prove more profitable in the long term.
Nice read that