The Match, The Stat: Galatasaray 1-0 Liverpool
Just as Liverpool's two matches at Molineux had many similarities, so their second defeat of 2025/26 at the Ali Sami Yen Stadium summoned déjà vu
Top Five Stats
Galatasaray are the only team Liverpool have failed to score against this season. This is despite amassing 3.12 expected goals across the two matches. They have seven goals from 3.09 xG versus West Ham in 2025/26, six from 3.14 against Bournemouth.
The Reds had six shots on target without scoring for only the second time since the start of last season. The other instance was also a 1-0 away defeat: at Tottenham in the 2024 League Cup semi-final (in which they had seven efforts on target).
Mario Lemina’s goal almost doubled the xG total from set pieces that Liverpool have conceded in the Champions League this season. They were on 0.53 before this game; Galatasaray had 0.75 in the match.
The visitors saw 18 of their passes intercepted, their most in league or Europe under Arne Slot. They last conceded more away from Anfield in the 2022 League Cup final, which included extra time.
Liverpool were penalised for five fouls in the opposition box, all of which occurred within a 35-minute period. They averaged 1.8 box fouls per match in the league phase.
Match Review
Liverpool have a very poor record against Galatasaray. Coming into this game they had won only one of the five Champions League meetings. Among teams they’ve faced more than four times in the competition, Chelsea are the only one they had as low a win rate against.
They may yet meet the Blues in Europe this season. For that to happen, they’ll have to beat the team against whom their win ratio has just got even worse.
When 2025/26 is over, there will be many games that will be good candidates to provide a snapshot summary of the campaign. Many of the common plot points of the season were on show here.
Some good moments among more bad ones. A catastrophic performance from Ibrahima Konaté, a midfield muddle with Alexis Mac Allister off the pace and Mohamed Salah on the periphery. A set piece goal conceded. A lack of recognisable attacking patterns. Some very random officiating. I mean I could go on?
As Galatasaray had lost just two of their 22 home matches in the knockout stages of the European Cup/Champions League, it was encouraging that Liverpool started the match so well. Their pressing looked better than it has for much of the campaign, forcing mistakes from Okan Buruk’s defenders.
The match ultimately followed a very similar pattern to when the teams met last September though. The Reds went behind in avoidable fashion before struggling to recover in a hostile atmosphere.
One of the many strange quirks of this season is that Liverpool’s set piece defending has not improved since Aaron Briggs left, goals have just stopped being scored. They were one of the best teams in the Premier League for the rate of expected goals conceded per 10 opposition corners in his time and they still are.
On Understat’s model, the Reds allow 0.38 xG for every 10 corners their opponents take. Galatasaray were able to generate 0.74 expected goals from their seven corners, with the first of them responsible for over a third of the offence they generated in the match.
Going behind so early was always going to be problematic. Based on average age, Gala are the oldest team left in the competition. The Turkish Süper Lig isn’t viewed as a retirement home for former Premier League players without reason. While this might have meant they would run out of gas, their knowhow proved invaluable. The referee didn’t bother to barter for what they were selling, he gladly paid over the odds any time one of their players hit the deck.
Liverpool’s greater issue was an inability to exert any form of control. The Reds’ average number of passes per possession sequence has been consistent this season whether in the league phase of this competition (4.33) or the Premier League (4.22).
In this match it was down at just 2.8. Where they had averaged 14.5 sequences of at least 10 passes in their first eight Champions League matches of 2025/26, here they mustered just two. It makes the complete exclusion of Curtis Jones, even off the bench, a mystery. Whatever deficiencies he may have, the ball isn’t turned over very often when he has it.
Which leads us to another problematic statistic: 20 turnovers of possession through poor control against an away average of 16.1 in the league. That doesn’t sound like a wide margin, but Liverpool’s share of the possession was 6.7 per cent lower here than on average on the road in England, so they had fewer opportunities to give the ball away.
That clearly didn’t prevent them from doing so, despite facing a side that Opta would rate as only the 17th best in the Premier League if they happened to play within it.
Speaking of our supercomputer friends, they gave Liverpool a 79 per cent chance of advancing before the tie began. Since the away goals rule was abolished, there have been 17 Champions League ties in which the home side won the first leg by one goal.
They qualified for the next round nine times with the away side going through on eight occasions. This tie is on a knife edge. The Reds will need to play much better at Anfield next Wednesday to turn the odds in their favour.
Source for graphics: markstatsbot, Opta Analyst.
I'm also on the latest Distance Covered podcast discussing the match:
https://distancecovered.substack.com/p/episode-106-bad-news-about-hell
I have defended Slot from a lot of criticism this season because I think ultimately the teams with the better players, more balanced squads tend to win, and those teams lacking that... look like we look.
But... the Macca / Curtis thing is looking increasingly bizarre and is the kind of thing that makes you worry the manager has actually just lost the plot. It's been odd for weeks/months now, but yesterday was the apotheosis of this oddity. Macca could not have looked more like a 36 year old in a 26 year old's game out of possession. (A penny for Gravenberch's thoughts as he collected a yellow for needing to take out a Gala player who waltzed past Macca is if simply wasn't there....)
But he also was so poor on the ball. And yet he gets the full 90.
It makes you wonder if something has happened behind the scenes of course. But then you see what happened in front of the scenes with Mo and he's starting every game again. So that suggests Slot is not the type to ice a player due to a disagreement off the field.
It's genuinely a head scratcher.