The Ghost Haunting Arne Slot

Almost everything has gone perfectly for Liverpool under Arne Slot. A small reversion to the mean on a single metric and things might not be so rosy though.

Liverpool beat Brighton 3-2 in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday. It took new head coach Arne Slot to a record of 12 wins, one draw and one loss with the Reds.

Seven of the victories were secured with a margin of at least two goals. The totals scored and conceded read 31 and nine respectively. Only in the last two matches have Liverpool not led the expected goals for the game by at least 0.4, with the average for the season a very healthy +1.1 per match.

That will ensure a club wins a lot of games. Twelve out of 14, by the looks of things. The shift from last season to this perfectly illustrates Rafa Benitez’ blanket analogy regarding balancing a team between defence and attack.

“The ‘short blanket’… if you cover your head, you have your feet cold, but if you cover your feet, you have your head cold.”

Liverpool’s average xG difference has not shifted from 2023/24 to this term. What has happened is that 0.4 more is being prevented at the back while the same amount has been lost from the front. It might be time to dig out a pair of bed socks, Rafa.

This can be viewed in two ways. A more solid team is less likely to lose as it concedes fewer high value chances. Does it have enough going the other way if it needs it though? Nottingham Forest created very little at Anfield but managed to score and were able to see the game out in relative comfort.

Despite this cooling off in attack, the value of the shots the Reds are taking is improving. In terms of Opta-defined big chances¹ with penalties excluded, Liverpool have averaged 3.5 per game under Slot, up 0.3 on last season. Keep in mind that the Manchester City side of 2019/20 are the only one to go above the higher mark in a completed Premier League season in the data era.

If everything sounds too good to be true, it likely isn’t. Based on opposition points-per-game average, the Reds have had a harder league campaign to date than either City or Aston Villa, two of the other teams in the top four, while every club they have faced in a cup competition is in the top 42 in the world, per Opta. There is one thing which could prove very costly with just a very slight change in performance down the line though.

What makes this worse is that the potential issue is totally uncontrollable from the manager’s perspective. We are, of course, here to talk about finishing.

In principle there is nothing to fear, in Halloween week or at any other time. Liverpool have converted 40.8 per cent of their non-penalty big chances (20 from 49), only a couple of ticks north of the average hit rate. Similarly, while the success varies among the five primary forwards, from Cody Gakpo (0/3) through to Luis Díaz (5/8), collectively they have put away 42.4 per cent of these golden opportunities. It all looks hugely sustainable.

A breakdown of the big chances by game state is fascinating, though, and the source of this statistician’s mild concern. You would expect a team to convert a higher proportion of any kind of shot when they are already winning, with the opposition leaving space as they pour forward in pursuit of saving the game. The opposite should be true too; if your team is searching for an equaliser, they are likely to come up against a lower block, a less porous backline.

Yet ever since Slot waltzed into town, Liverpool have been more productive the worse the position in which they have found themselves. The Reds have generated four big chances when losing in 2024/25 and have converted the lot.

This occurred twice at Arsenal last weekend, with those examples preceded by goals for Ibrahima Konaté and Diogo Jota against Milan and West Ham respectively. Last season, Liverpool scored just three times from 23 high-value opportunities when trying to draw level. In the space of four April days, they squandered two when down against Atalanta and four versus Crystal Palace. The level of pressure is far less now than it will ever be so close to the end of a campaign, but on such margins, hopes of trophies can drift away into the ether.

The image at the top of the page hints at what can really go wrong when it comes to missing big chances. In the 13 full seasons from 2011/12 onwards, the Premier League has seen 24 instances of a player having at least 16 non-penalty big chances while converting no more than 26 per cent of them. The only team to carry two such wasters is Kenny Dalglish’s Liverpool, with Andy Carroll and Luis Suárez’s errant finishing helping to ensure the Reds finished eighth.

Farewell, King, hello, Brendan. If this level of underachievement is unlikely to haunt Slot at this point, in Darwin Núñez he has one of only two men (alongside Christian Benteke) to appear twice among this group of four-and-twenty feckless finishers.

The Reds might also slow down at converting big chances when level this term. Before missing two in a matter of first half moments at Brighton on Wednesday, their hit rate in tied games was approaching 60 per cent, an eye wateringly high return. The quartet of Curtis Jones, Alexis Mac Allister, Núñez and Virgil van Dijk have all had one big chance and scored it in this game state; don’t be stunned if their next such opening or two goes astray.

The team is also overheating at the opposite end of the field. Having three excellent goalkeepers makes this probable, but Liverpool’s shot-stoppers have collectively saved 70.6 per cent of on-target non-penalty big chances in 2024/25, 38 points above league average.

Across the period covered by the graph, Alisson has unsurprisingly been better than Caoimhín Kelleher, though only by five per cent. But his body of work is three times larger too, so the longer the Brazilian is unavailable, the likelier it is that Liverpool will see a downturn from their presumably unsustainable big chance save percentage.

To some, this analysis will be scaremongering. Liverpool are having a healthy amount of high-quality chances while mostly restricting their opponents from doing likewise. It is all they can truly control, and they are doing it. There might be a spectre hovering over Slot’s shoulder the next time his side trails in a game though.

1. Definition: A situation where a player should reasonably be expected to score, usually in a one on one scenario or from very close range when the ball has a clear path to goal and there is low to moderate pressure on the shooter. Penalties are always considered big chances.