Stat of the Match: West Ham 1-1 Liverpool
Liverpool Women drew 1-1 at West Ham United on Saturday. In record signing Olivia Smith, it's clear the Reds have unearthed a superstar.
The men’s and women’s teams of Liverpool Football Club played out broadly similar matches this weekend. Both away from home, they led 1-0 at half time, only to concede a regrettably preventable goal after the interval. The setback did at least shake them awake, with the sides responding well to the equaliser.
Where Diogo Jota was able to win a penalty to help secure a 2-1 win at Wolves, Fuka Nagano was not in a 1-1 draw at West Ham. Hers looked a very good claim for a foul in the box from where I was standing, though.
This is why this weeks SOTM is looking at the women’s match. Rather than watching on television (as I did on Saturday evening), I was at the game to witness a performance from a Liverpool player which was so good it deserves to be highlighted.
The Reds’ women’s team broke their transfer record this summer, to sign Olivia Smith from Sporting. Per The Guardian, the fee was £210k, which was a touch over the highest amount spent by the men’s team in 1976. Approaching half a century ago, Liverpool signed David Johnson from Ipswich for £200k, before more than doubling that sum 12 months later to buy Kenny Dalglish.
Nobody needs telling that the sexes are in different financial stratospheres. It would be nice to think it won’t take 50 years for women’s football to catch up, but let’s be realistic; it won’t.
Based on her efforts at the catchily titled Chigwell Construction Stadium, Smith looks set to be closer to the Dalglish bracket than the Johnson one in terms of impact. Starting on the right of the front line in Matt Beard’s 3-5-2 formation, the young Canadian popped up all over the West Ham half.
It was the variety of Smith’s contributions in-and-out-of possession which brought the performance to life. She carried the ball well, moving it 184 yards in total. That was 71 more than any teammate, over 100 ahead of any West Ham player.
Her ability at carrying the ball helped Smith to complete all four of her attempted take-ons, including one for her goal. She sent two defenders ‘for the Echo’ before cutting back inside to curl a beautiful strike into the far corner.
In terms of adding to traditional expected goals with finishing in Opta’s post-shot model, Smith made a 0.17 xG opening into a 0.82 on target effort for Kinga Szemik to try to save. She didn’t stand a chance, with the 0.65 difference the second highest for a goal in the opening two weeks of the new WSL season.
As well as also playing three key passes to others, Smith harried opponents well. The young forward made two tackles in the final third, something any Liverpool player had done just 12 times since the club was last promoted.
Combining her metrics illustrates how rare her overall performance level was. Equally, doing this can send you into analytical dead ends if you’re not careful.
Here’s a couple of tweets highlighting some data from the efforts of Mohamed Salah and Ryan Gravenberch at Molineux. LFC Transfer Room stated a variety of very low numbers, while the StatMuse FC post listed duels, fouls and tackles, even though duels combines the latter two metrics (plus dribbles) anyway. Context mustn’t be ignored, even if doing so will buy you the hard currency of social media engagement.
For Smith, we can keep things far simpler: three, three and three. How often does a player have at least three shots, create three chances and complete three dribbles? These are decent numbers in important areas which do not immediately overlap.
Since the summer of 2022, these benchmarks have been simultaneously hit 26 times in a WSL match. However, only 14 different players have achieved the feat. This is a list which includes Lauren Hemp, Chloe Kelly (six times each), Lauren James, Beth Mead and Khadija Shaw. You don’t have to follow women’s football remotely closely to have heard of many of the elite players to whom Smith matched up on Sunday.
Only the aforementioned Laurens managed ‘3-3-3’ at a younger age (since 2018/19), with Smith the only non-English woman aged under 22 to tick this off.
Add in her pair of final third tackles and she stands alone in this company. But as with the Gravenberch example, any performance can look numerically unique if you check enough metrics. Smith did more than enough to suggest this sort of statistical showing won’t be a one-off for Liverpool though.
Great to see the excitement of her signing come through on the pitch. My Bowie was upset Kearns had left, and I said Olivia will be a new favourite. Along with Fuka Nagano, which you mention, there's some real talent.
With mostly the same players as last year I feel we will have greater understanding and keep up the pressure for a CL place. Although I fear it may be tougher this year.
And, yes, gotta love a snappy stadium name.
Love the Women's team as much as i do the Men's just not able to catch the matches. Lovely stuff Andrew. Do you think you can get them more on SOTM? It'd be lovely!