The Match, The Stat: Liverpool 1-1 Burnley
Liverpool huffed and they puffed and they should've blown Scott Parker's house down.
Top Five Stats
For only the third time since 2014, Liverpool had 31 non-penalty shots in a Premier League game without winning. One of the other examples was a 1-1 draw with Burnley at Anfield in 2017 (in which they had 35, the top flight record when not winning in this period).
Thirty-one is the joint-second highest shot total in any of Europe’s big five leagues this season.
Curtis Jones made his first goal contribution of the season by setting up Florian Wirtz, who has four goals and two assists in his last seven appearances.
Dominik Szoboszlai missed the second penalty he has taken for Liverpool. Excluding shootouts, other players who did this include Billy Liddell, Steven Gerrard, Luis Súarez, Daniel Sturridge, Roberto Firmino and Darwin Núñez. Heritage.
The Reds had 57 non-penalty shots against Burnley this season. These efforts resulted in one goal.
Match Review
Liverpool came into this match with a better points-per-game average against Arsenal than collectively versus the newly promoted sides this season.
That would still have been the case regardless of the result from Burnley’s visit to Anfield, but failure to beat the Clarets means the Reds don’t even top a mini league of themselves, Burnley, Leeds and Sunderland. It’s not a good look, Arne.
Sporting statistics can be weird. Opta posted ahead of the match that Liverpool were averaging 14.7 shots per league game in 2025/26, their fewest for 24 seasons. As bad as that sounds, it was the third most in the division at the start of the day and more than Manchester City. A greater concern was that the Reds were only recording four shots on target per game, which ranked joint-11th ahead of kick off.
Both averages were passed in the first half, with Liverpool firing five of their 15 shots on target before the interval. Only at Brentford last season have the Reds had more goal attempts in the opening 45 minutes of a match under Arne Slot (19).
It was almost too on the nose for 2025/26 that Dominik Szoboszlai smashed a penalty off the crossbar. It was just the second spot kick Liverpool have been awarded in the league this season, after they had nine in 2024/25. This really makes a difference between the two campaigns, especially as every single one was converted last term.
That Liverpool were able to generate so many chances is undoubtedly a positive, especially in light of the more cautious style they have employed of late. One piece of pre-match trivia was that the Reds had spent 25 per cent of their time building up against low blocks in the Premier League this season, more than any other side. Sadly Opta didn’t then reveal how much they had created against these deep-lying defences, but instinct says ‘not much’. That wasn’t the case here.
There were two issues. Liverpool didn’t test Martin Dúbravka enough, even allowing for Bashir Humphreys making two goal-line clearances. Liverpool’s 10 efforts between the sticks were worth 1.85 xG on target in Opta’s post-shot model.
Only 11 of the 110 examples in FBRef’s database saw a Premier League side register less xGOT when having 10 shots on target. The breakdown between the two halves highlights the second problem, in that the Reds didn’t create much of note in the 32 minutes that followed the equaliser.
Their decent sounding eleven shots in that period is undermined by only seven of them being in the penalty area with just four within the width of the six-yard box. None of those attempts from the danger zone was on target, allowing Burnley to cling to their point with relative ease.
Despite all of this, it’s hard to be too critical of a Liverpool side that ‘won’ the xG by 3.0 to 0.4. This was far more ‘one of those days’ than was the case for most of the bad results this season. You’d take this over the Anfield performances against Sunderland or Leeds, as low a bar as that is.
Ultimately, though, the Reds have failed to beat any of the newly promoted sides at home for the first time since 1980/81. Liverpool finished fifth that season, albeit they also lifted the European Cup. The former feels plausible in May, the latter feels oceans away.
Source for graphics: Transfermarkt, Opta Analyst.
Frustrating really.
I thought it was another great performance that just didn't get the result it deserved....again.
On the surface not beating any of the promoted teams at home looks bad, but v Leeds we were denied a clear pen that skewed matters.
Andrew's Substack is an oasis of calm and sense amid the howls from some places. ❤️ 💙