Thursday 28 September 2017

Spartak Moscow 1-1 Liverpool: When is Bad Luck Not Bad Luck?

As the final whistle blew following Liverpool’s draw in Moscow, statistics were already being trotted out to bemoan the team’s bad luck. Total shots taken, total shots faced and the respective ‘expected goals’ of the two sides were amongst the favourites. There is nothing wrong with these stats, but they are being grossly misinterpreted: the repeated disparity between chances created and the final score-line points to problems at the club, not just misfortune.

The simple shot count is not hard to explain. Liverpool have taken 121 shots from their last six games, but have won just one and scored only 6: the obvious conclusion is that the team are shooting from bad areas and being wasteful from good areas. The shots from tough positions are somewhat enforced by opponents regularly opting to employ a deep line against Liverpool – when faced with disciplined banks of defenders, the temptation is strong to try and bypass them by simply striking the ball from distance. Indeed, sometimes this produces results; Coutinho is yet to really find his range since returning to the team, but has nonetheless already produced a lovely free-kick from some way out. However, the manager should be looking to encourage the team to focus more on build-up. It requires more patience, but the side are capable of working the golden opportunities – the equaliser against Spartak was an example of such craft, with Mane and Coutinho linking up intricately to put the Brazilian clean through.

The more troubling problem is the regularity with which these kinds of chances are being squandered. The reintegration of a dedicated playmaker in the shape of Coutinho, combined no doubt with instructions from Klopp to try and carve out better chances, has led to the creation of more opportunities that can be described as ‘clear-cut’ - more often than not, however, they simply aren’t going in. Following the Sevilla game, I referred to these underlying statistics as promising: as a general rule, high expected goals and low actual goals is the sign of an outlier rather than a trend. In fact, entire ‘luck models’ have been constructed with expected goals vs actual goals at the core.  However, it has now happened far too often for Liverpool to chalk the disparity down to misfortune: the root of the issue is serial profligacy. This applies to both the final ball and the finishing. It was evident once again in Moscow – Firmino botched a square ball that would have resulted in a tap-in, Sturridge volleyed over the top from close range and Salah wasted a promising situation by needlessly hitting the ball first time. The personnel seemingly lack the composure to pick and execute the right option in the key areas. If enough chances are created then some will eventually find their way in, but this can only paper over the cracks for so long: Liverpool need to find a way of becoming more clinical if they wish to harness the significant potential that their world class build-up play creates.

It is not all doom and gloom, however. Much as the repeated failure to take good chances is frustrating, their consistent creation is nonetheless an improvement on last season. In that campaign, a deep line essentially ended our chances of scoring unless Coutinho could conjure something up from range: once teams figured this out, the season stuttered badly and Klopp’s men only just secured fourth. Now, we are regularly finding ways through – the players simply aren’t used to it yet! Perhaps the shock of finding themselves in the clear after months of feeding off scraps is partly to blame for the wastefulness fans have had to witness of late; whatever the cause of the problem, it is easier to overcome than the hurdle of the low block that the team has already cleared. It is hard to immediately appreciate it after yet another draw in a game we should have won, but this team really isn’t far away from being something special.

It is also worth noting that Liverpool have been victims of some genuine bad luck. Mane’s infamous red card has been discussed at length – to avoid the risk of this article turning into a rant about that, suffice it to simply say that the rules clearly dictate that a yellow card should have been awarded. The referee also did Liverpool no favours against Spartak: none of their time-wasting antics were punished, and the added time fell well short of the amount actually wasted by the Russians. There was also a fairly convincing penalty shout for Mohamed Salah which was turned down by the officials. When it isn’t bad luck per se, it’s fine margins: Firmino struck the post from his spot kick against Sevilla, for example. These read a little bit like excuses, and as already highlighted there are things that Liverpool do need to work on, but it’s certainly true that things haven’t really gone our way of late.


The reasonable conclusion, therefore, is that things will probably pick up but the team will have to work to make it happen. They cannot spend too long licking their wounds: it’s time to head to Melwood and get some finishing drills going!

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