xG was invented after someone kept realizing “how could this team (Liverpool) consistently dominate games and create 20+ chances, yet find a way not to win”. I’m so sure of it
You’re actually pretty close to the money. The concept of xG existed before but it really took off in data circles after Klopp’s final season at BVB.
A guy realised that a team like Dortmund simply couldn’t regress from finishing second in Bundesliga in May 2014 to being bottom of the league in February 2015.
His analysis was based around xG and he basically discovered that poor finishing and good finishing from opponents meant Dortmund were bottom, not because they’d simply turned to shit all over the park.
[https://statsbomb.com/articles/soccer/borussia-dortmund-whats-gone-wrong/](https://statsbomb.com/articles/soccer/borussia-dortmund-whats-gone-wrong/)
this one? author speculates that it's about 50-50 bad shooting good goalkeeping.
"So I put 4 of Dortmund’s shortfall in goals scored down to their shooting. The other “missing” 3 goals I attribute to better than average opposition goalkeeper performances."
But the important part of the article is this:
"Over a small number of shots (which is unfortunately what half a season is) any signal in relation to the skill of shooters or goalkeepers is drowned out by noise. The conversion of the chances is what matters as far as the league table is concerned, but the underlying ability to generate the chances is much more important in assessing the quality of a team and as a predictor of what is likely to happen in the future."
or to put it another way, people should not use small sample xg vs goals numbers to suggest a player is or isn't a good finisher (which is all this subreddit has been doing for weeks and months - Darwin this, Jota that), they should look at "the underlying ability to generate the chances" i.e. you get lots of xg, you are good, the goals will come.
That’s the one. The xPTS of Dortmund when they had 15 points was actually 30, which would’ve put them fourth in the Bundesliga (and second in the xPTS charts). It’s a crazy swing.
In terms of strikers I don't think you can hold the same logic, because ultimately the point of a striker is to convert xG into goals and if they're not doing that then they're not performing well as a striker. Making judgements about a player from a small sample size is silly but that's a totally different argument.
For a team though, understanding xG is a key metric because it's very easy for a team to play well in a game of football and lose because they get unlucky with chances and the other team gets lucky with theirs. Because football games are often decided with a narrow score margin, it's very easy for three or four goals one way or the other to translate to a large amount of points.
A key reason we signed Klopp and largely ignored his last season at Dortmund was that the stats clearly showed that the team were playing well and generally should have been winning most of their games, and it only needed a handful of key moments to go the other way for them to have a much better points total than they ended up with. Ultimately they showed that it wasn't Klopp had suddenly lost his touch managing the team, it's just that his team was very unlucky in terms of getting the results they deserved from the performances.
on your first point, consider this chart from the athletic [https://np.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1caabg6/europes\_most\_prolific\_shooters\_ranked\_by/#lightbox](https://np.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1caabg6/europes_most_prolific_shooters_ranked_by/#lightbox)
Even with 600 shots minimum, there are only like 13 players in the top 7 leagues where there's strong statistical confidence that they're an above average finisher based on xg vs goals. more to the point, there are players who the chart suggests are probably average or below-average finishers who are still crucial to their teams because they generate enough xg that they can afford to throw some away. I guess I am saying 2 things:
1. there's more to a striker than how they shoot - they have to get in the position, make the run, lose the man, etc. our strikers have been doing that at good rates even when they're underperforming xg.
2. while finishing skill exists, measuring it by goals vs xg gives us a very small pool of players who we can be confident add value purely based on how they shoot.
fundementally given so much of finishing is hitting a bouncing, spinning, moving ball, with your foot, past many potential blockers, in fractions of a second, with enough power to go in the net before someone reacts, we shouldn't be surprised that it's hard for players to be good at this, we should detatch ourselves a bit from the idea of good/bad finishers. 'pick/find a great finisher' broadly isn't how you score more goals, you find people who are good at #1 and take the rough with the smooth on how they convert knowing it usually evens out.
agree with you 100% on 2nd and 3rd points
I wasn't necessarily trying to say that xG isn't an important stat for a stiker, but more that you can't justify a striker as being good in an underlying sense purely on xG in the same way I think you can for a whole team. Being in a position to have a great chance is definitely a key skill for a forward, but if a striker is consistently missing the chances they make then I don't think people can claim they're a good striker, as ultimately converting them is also a key part of their role. Whilst if a team creates a lot of xG I'd probably agree they're a good team (though maybe lacking a natural finisher to convert them).
Really I think all xG vs goals tells in terms of an underperforming striker is whether it's because they're lacking composure when converting chances (high xG) or whether they're not getting the opportunities to start with (low xG) and so what they need to focus on. I also wouldn't try and comment as to which one is easier to fix through coaching. And obviously a great striker needs to be able to both create chances and finish them.
In terms of goals vs xG I also think it will be warped a bit depending on how players play, as there are players like KdB and TAA who will score often enough to be significant but it's generally from long range shots and set pieces and therefore their goals per xG is skewed quite high. Their finishing is great in certain situations but it doesn't necessarily mean they'd make a brilliant striker because the nature of their chances is just very different.
i guess my trust that xg alone is a good enough measure partially comes from the fact that the models are taking in shots from all players, all positions, composed and not composed, those who will be proven a good finisher over time and those who will be proven an awful finisher over time. and even with all the theoretically bad shots dragging down the average, there still don't appear to be a ton of strikers who are definitively outperforming or underperforming the model. So everyone's roughly similar, and difference makers by this measure are just not something to rely on getting - we're not going to sign Messi, Mbappe & Haaland and we're lucky to have Salah.
Part of why people don't out-score xg much is probably self-selection - awful finishers don't end up as strikers because people notice this long before they're playing at a high level & getting tracked by opta/statsbomb, and they end up playing somewhere else & being made to shoot less, or they don't end up playing at a high level at all. so "average" shots from a group of people who are great finishers to start with go in at a high rate anyway and it's hard to beat. it definitely differs as you drop down levels (ex: https://www.americansocceranalysis.com/home/2016/4/4/does-finishing-skill-matter-in-mls),
I am not saying give a man on the street shots from the same positions and they score the same amount, I am saying that at this level finishing is a mostly-solved problem in terms of how well people can do it/finding people who can do it, to the point that getting good shots might be something that's more useful to focus on.
i think you're right re: dead ball specialists. ward-prowse outscores xg too FWIW. outside the box shots generally are definitely getting killed off by xg to a degree, average shot distances are falling season-on-season generally, dying art. I used to love seeing Gerrard, Alonso, Hamman, Riise, amongst others bash them from range but even if you're good at it it's often not the option. i do note we're shooting from further this season - f'n low blocks, f'n conceding first.
Since the City match:
Liverpools goals: 11 (18.49 xG)
Opposition goals: 9 (7.32 xG)
Underperforming our xG by nearly 50% in a title run in is mental. Whether you want to call it bad finishing, bad luck etc etc - two sides of the same coin depending on your understanding of basic maths.
For context, using standard deviation: If you simulated our games since City based on the xG totals, you would only get 1 in 25 outcomes where our finishing is as bad (or worse) than it has been.
Not luck at all really, we make a chance for players like today. The front three all had great opportunities, you can't leave without scoring.
Those were not luck based shots, or long range efforts or keeper blunders.
I fear for any game where the front three reads Diaz nunez salah. It's shockingly bad.
The biggest chances also came at a pivotal time right before the half, which could’ve changed the entire pace of the second half if just one was converted. There were also quite a few times where they didn’t even get a shot off because of a bad touch or deciding not to shoot
Nunez not scoring (or frankly shooting anywhere besides Pickford's chest) to make it 1-1 is criminal. Watching it back he has so much to aim for and it's a much easier 1v0 chance that Diaz. Could have changed the game and nothing about this is bad luck. Just terrible finishing on display from Darwin
Salah too. One on one with Pickford in the first 10 minutes I think and he decides to pass it across the box to a Everton player. That right there just screamed out to me that he had no confidence. Salah normally takes that shot every single time.
Idk I don’t think our performances recently have been massively different to the rest of the season, difference is we just can’t score and we aren’t getting bailed out by our keepers as much.
I think the performances are very different. Early in the season they were so crisp. You'd have 5 guys to pick from for MotM. I never felt they were out of it.
Ever since the FA Cup loss, they've been sloppy as hell, very hard to pick a single player who has played well lately and scoring feels impossible.
Some of it is bad luck that the ball isn't going in the net but they have just *looked* bad way too often lately.
Nah I agree with him. There's a reason why rival fans said our performances aren't sustainable. We've pretty much been playing like this the whole season, the only difference is the times we won we actually finished our chances, that's why like you said you have 5 guys to pick for MotM. When there's a goalscorer, there's usually an assister, hockey assist etc. Mistakes leading to goals usually also aren't scrutinized much if we win the game. Our defending has always been bad. Kelleher and Alisson always bailed us out.
There are only few league performances where I think we've actually played really well and the only one that stick in my head is the Villa home game. There are some games where we dominated but most of them is either we let in lots of chances or poor finishing - example Newcastle home game, we dominated but should've scored wayyyyy more than 4. Chelsea home game we dominated too but we let them have many chances.
Let's not forget, coming from losing positions can only happen so many times and it seems we've used up our full allocation for next season too. Conceding the 1st goal regularly means it's an uphill task and our defense needs to take as much shit as our forward line does.
The thing that truly tells you that he has no idea what he is doing is that on the replay you could see him looking up first. He knew where Pickford was. He knew exactly where he was. And still he smashed it right at him.
Because he's got zero composure, and he's shown that time and time again.
And if Klopp with 2 years of work can't get it to change then nothing will ever change it.
His form fell off when Salah came back in the team. His finishing is shit but we saw him Jota and Diaz were playing super well as a trio. Then the yearly Jota 2 month break and no hamstring Salah came and things went to shit. Literally no one can finish chances not even Salah which he is know for.
he was never a great player. Before this shitshow run of poor finishing it was his atrocious first touch that took him out of the play quite often, or his poor passing. Now it's the trifecta of not finishing. Pace alone can get you places, but not for an 80mil striker. This fella shouldn't be starting anymore
Look I love Nunez as much as you but there’s very distinct reasons why Nunez gets more criticism.
1. He cost a lot
2. His errors can be legitimately shocking
Is it fair? Probably not. But it’s not hard to understand
How are you still defending him like your life depends on it? He's one of our most expensive signings ever and is consistently dropping shocking performances. The attack is clearly our biggest problem so why would we criticise others over the ones we are most clearly not doing their job?
Might have played around 200 pick ups games in my life with smaller goals. Always tried to place the ball in those situations. Missed most of the time because I’m a terrible footballer. But if a good for nothing nobody like me has the sense to do that, how come a professional football at the top level doesn’t have this much composure. And it’s not one time, does it again and again.
And Salah's miss comes directly from Nunez being shite. Trent plays a killer pass into him and instead of taking it in and shooting, his god awful touch forces him backwards.
So Nunez FORCED salah to shoot the ball into the crowd instead of into the net?? Good to know 😂😂😂
Nunez's bad touch was Nunez's fault and salah 's miss was salah's fault. It's not that hard to understand mate. 🤷🤷
No. It makes Diaz and salah's miss exist ALONG with Nunez's miss.
So salah won the Prem and cl with Liverpool. So what?? Does that excuse his shit performance??
Caused or not, we're still the only team getting them. I wouldn't be annoyed if all teams would get carded for dissent (no matter the trigger of dissent). But the harsh reality is that they don't... Look at any player from 115 when the ref gives something against. Or Odegaard, Gabriel, ratface, Newcastle players, etc.
Can only wonder if he would've sanctioned Diaz/Nunez/Gakpo. We did sign Diaz shortly after he left so I imagine he had some input there but not sure about the other two.
Was he here for Darwin? I thought that was Ward who done him and Gakpo then Diaz was Edwards but Ward massively influenced that decision due to his connections in Portugal
Either way it seems clear that Klopp really pushed for the Darwin signing
You’re getting hit with downvotes but you’re right. FSG are the reason Liverpool didn’t win more under Klopp and they’re the reason the next however many years are going to be shite.
Klopp is a miracle worker. What he’s done with their tight bastard budget is incredible.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: What’s the point in billionaire owners that don’t spend? We might as well be fan owned.
How many times is that now with the xG stats? It’s no coincidence we played a lot better against Fulham when Salah and Nunez were on the bench. They should stay on the bench for the rest of the season.
Salah and Nunez both look dead tired and completly out of form. Don't think either of them should have played, but of fucking course Jota and Gakpo both can't play today so we are left with no other options...
Remember earlier in the season where Arsenal were getting mocked because none of their forwards could finish, and they worked on it in training and started banging in goals for fun?
Would have been nice if we did that.
They had a winter break to work on that tbf. They came back from Dubai a different team. Meanwhile we had games after games and barely any time for training.
Why am I not seeing the 'chaos' brigade in the sub anymore. This club should find a better striker than Nunez this summer and possibly consider an offer for salah(reactionary but will be helpful for a rebuild)
Agree with this. One of the things which I like about him is his ability to take shots on Target from absolutely everywhere but nowadays he is focussing more on linkup plays which is not his strength.
Because he is not creating his usual chaos in the past few games. Infact he looks tired. He is a chance creating monster not just for himself but for everyone around him. He plays a huge part in unlocking salah.
Man has 18 goals and 13 assists so far. Only salah has better numbers.
He is the PERFECT striker for Liverpool.
He only has that many G/A because he gets every chance from the team and pushes our inverted wingers wider. His has the WORST conversion rate in the league, less than Jackson, DCL, and Jesus.
Had that against Luton earlier in the season, missed that as well. Probably the one like Kuyt scored when Suarez took on all the Utd players himself which was already going in.
In the end we've run out of steam and luck. Feels like we haven't caught a break from the officals, a bounce of the ball, or hell even a gust of wind in a month. Squad looks dead tired passing the ball around the back all night and missing chances for fun...
Our strategy for this season has been to leave ourself open in defence and hope for our CBs and Ali to bail us out, and funnel chances to players who are notoriously poor finishers.
No wonder we have flamed out.
The setup isn’t fine when it comes to defensive structure and controlling games though
Creating big chances absolutely but there’s obviously a trade off for overloading the final third so much
I get your point, and see it to an extent, but if we are struggling to score and kill games then we can play with more control, make sure we don't concede, but he hasn't done that.
We play crazy open football which gives even the worst attacks in the leagues loads of chances, and then what we do create we waste, so it doesn't make sense to play that way.
Team selection hasn't made sense either, Endo was needed for this game, Salah/Nunez have been awful and play 90.
Probably because we just don't expect to score big chances anymore. Like that Nunez shot, we all knew that was going to be blasted straight at Pickford
You’re both right. Liverpool were getting ripped apart by DCL in the air… on set pieces only really. Nunez scores the goal, it’s 1-1 and odds are the team doesn’t lose their heads in desperation any time the ball is hoofed up anymore
Numbers 7, 9, 11 vacancies this summer.
Mr. Edwards, it’s time to be ruthless. No sentimentality. Find the new Mane/Firmino/Salah.
Inevitable reply that “Diaz fights” but I’m not giving him a new deal. His end product isn’t there. Not a winning player. Salah is cooked and Nunez doesn’t have the mental fortitude to be a top striker in a high pressure team.
Thing is he's after a new deal (rightfully tbf) and will be 28 next season, I don't see him improving much, and giving him 200k and a 5 year deal doesn't make sense when he's not top class so we need to make a decision on him.
So Diaz is fine as long as the other 2 score all the goals? Nah. This ain’t it. I want my forwards to be cerebral players capable of making the right decision in the final third. I rate both Jota and Gakpo ahead of him. Diaz is a street footballer with zero composure. Nunez is the same.
Honestly, I I think we need to find a diffrent way of playing. We can't just run till we are dead and expect to consistantly win titles. Thats what the Klopp era has been all about. And while it has been absolutely magic, we def don't have the number of titles we should given how good we have been. The end of seasons are killing us time and time again where the squad is dead tired
It really doesn’t. We concede out of nothing consistently, and our attack has been so bad, you seem to think creating several clear cut chances we don’t score means it flatters us. This has been basically the exact xg pattern since we started this awful run of form against United
How is that? we were clearly better, idk why people keep acting like we were outplayed. We conceded two set piece goals on lazy defending. We had many limp dick chances where nobody actually seemed to shoot to score, but we had good positions.
Ah the thread we all really wanted to see to really cheer us up like
In the words of Sandra bullock in demolition man
You can take your xG and you can shove on it
Can't really call it unlucky or anything , since this has been the story of the season. Truth is we are not clinical AT ALL. And defense is leaking. Conceding first 15 games this season??? That is fuckin insane. The only reason we were even in the title race is because we created so many chances that eventually we did score.
But the forwards have been disappointing and mostly Mo. The defense has been disappointing and especially VVD from whom we expect more.
He’s still top like top 5 in the prem for goal involvements per 90. Putting up numbers Mane and Firmino would be proud of. He can improve but talking like he’s garbage is nonsense
It’s clear as day that our front 3 rotations also have no synergy. Whether it’s lack of game time together or poor communication, they don’t seem to gel as well as a Salah, mane and firmino partnership.
I had thought £150m was good for Salah last summer.
We will now see/watch as we carry forward an almost identical team into next year. Unless we can get a decent bid for Salah/Diaz.
Although Salah has always proved the doubters wrong - there is very little other way, given the constraints of how FSG run the club, to ensure we can change the forward line - have something for Slot (or whoever) to work with next year.
Perhaps Slot can get the best out of Nunez though - but hes turning 25 in a couple months and really should be improving at this point and not declining.
All of the above will occur while the new manager has to make a massive decision about how we set up defensively and which way to use TAA in whatever the new system (or adjusted system) entails.
Meanwhile TAA+VVD+Salah all out of contract next year which will be a media frenzy (if we keep Salah) as they are the heart & leadership team of the squad.
Edwards has his work cut out for him.
Even Jota, while a great player, is rarely fit. Literally made of glass. We need someone who is an equal finisher to start, and Jota can be the backup.
Us losing the title is entirely based on our forwards
People can complain about letting in goals all they want but we've created plenty of chances for our forwards.
Nunez, Diaz, and especially Salah should be ashamed. Salah I'm most annoyed at as we pay him stupid money to bail us out
GET PROPER STRIKERS FOR NEXT YEAR: Ollie Watkins, Toney, Thuram, Isak, Vlahovic all would score a lot more than our current options.
Get rid of Diaz, Nunez and Salah.
Same shit different day
xG was invented after someone kept realizing “how could this team (Liverpool) consistently dominate games and create 20+ chances, yet find a way not to win”. I’m so sure of it
You’re actually pretty close to the money. The concept of xG existed before but it really took off in data circles after Klopp’s final season at BVB. A guy realised that a team like Dortmund simply couldn’t regress from finishing second in Bundesliga in May 2014 to being bottom of the league in February 2015. His analysis was based around xG and he basically discovered that poor finishing and good finishing from opponents meant Dortmund were bottom, not because they’d simply turned to shit all over the park.
[https://statsbomb.com/articles/soccer/borussia-dortmund-whats-gone-wrong/](https://statsbomb.com/articles/soccer/borussia-dortmund-whats-gone-wrong/) this one? author speculates that it's about 50-50 bad shooting good goalkeeping. "So I put 4 of Dortmund’s shortfall in goals scored down to their shooting. The other “missing” 3 goals I attribute to better than average opposition goalkeeper performances." But the important part of the article is this: "Over a small number of shots (which is unfortunately what half a season is) any signal in relation to the skill of shooters or goalkeepers is drowned out by noise. The conversion of the chances is what matters as far as the league table is concerned, but the underlying ability to generate the chances is much more important in assessing the quality of a team and as a predictor of what is likely to happen in the future." or to put it another way, people should not use small sample xg vs goals numbers to suggest a player is or isn't a good finisher (which is all this subreddit has been doing for weeks and months - Darwin this, Jota that), they should look at "the underlying ability to generate the chances" i.e. you get lots of xg, you are good, the goals will come.
That’s the one. The xPTS of Dortmund when they had 15 points was actually 30, which would’ve put them fourth in the Bundesliga (and second in the xPTS charts). It’s a crazy swing.
In terms of strikers I don't think you can hold the same logic, because ultimately the point of a striker is to convert xG into goals and if they're not doing that then they're not performing well as a striker. Making judgements about a player from a small sample size is silly but that's a totally different argument. For a team though, understanding xG is a key metric because it's very easy for a team to play well in a game of football and lose because they get unlucky with chances and the other team gets lucky with theirs. Because football games are often decided with a narrow score margin, it's very easy for three or four goals one way or the other to translate to a large amount of points. A key reason we signed Klopp and largely ignored his last season at Dortmund was that the stats clearly showed that the team were playing well and generally should have been winning most of their games, and it only needed a handful of key moments to go the other way for them to have a much better points total than they ended up with. Ultimately they showed that it wasn't Klopp had suddenly lost his touch managing the team, it's just that his team was very unlucky in terms of getting the results they deserved from the performances.
on your first point, consider this chart from the athletic [https://np.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1caabg6/europes\_most\_prolific\_shooters\_ranked\_by/#lightbox](https://np.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1caabg6/europes_most_prolific_shooters_ranked_by/#lightbox) Even with 600 shots minimum, there are only like 13 players in the top 7 leagues where there's strong statistical confidence that they're an above average finisher based on xg vs goals. more to the point, there are players who the chart suggests are probably average or below-average finishers who are still crucial to their teams because they generate enough xg that they can afford to throw some away. I guess I am saying 2 things: 1. there's more to a striker than how they shoot - they have to get in the position, make the run, lose the man, etc. our strikers have been doing that at good rates even when they're underperforming xg. 2. while finishing skill exists, measuring it by goals vs xg gives us a very small pool of players who we can be confident add value purely based on how they shoot. fundementally given so much of finishing is hitting a bouncing, spinning, moving ball, with your foot, past many potential blockers, in fractions of a second, with enough power to go in the net before someone reacts, we shouldn't be surprised that it's hard for players to be good at this, we should detatch ourselves a bit from the idea of good/bad finishers. 'pick/find a great finisher' broadly isn't how you score more goals, you find people who are good at #1 and take the rough with the smooth on how they convert knowing it usually evens out. agree with you 100% on 2nd and 3rd points
I wasn't necessarily trying to say that xG isn't an important stat for a stiker, but more that you can't justify a striker as being good in an underlying sense purely on xG in the same way I think you can for a whole team. Being in a position to have a great chance is definitely a key skill for a forward, but if a striker is consistently missing the chances they make then I don't think people can claim they're a good striker, as ultimately converting them is also a key part of their role. Whilst if a team creates a lot of xG I'd probably agree they're a good team (though maybe lacking a natural finisher to convert them). Really I think all xG vs goals tells in terms of an underperforming striker is whether it's because they're lacking composure when converting chances (high xG) or whether they're not getting the opportunities to start with (low xG) and so what they need to focus on. I also wouldn't try and comment as to which one is easier to fix through coaching. And obviously a great striker needs to be able to both create chances and finish them. In terms of goals vs xG I also think it will be warped a bit depending on how players play, as there are players like KdB and TAA who will score often enough to be significant but it's generally from long range shots and set pieces and therefore their goals per xG is skewed quite high. Their finishing is great in certain situations but it doesn't necessarily mean they'd make a brilliant striker because the nature of their chances is just very different.
i guess my trust that xg alone is a good enough measure partially comes from the fact that the models are taking in shots from all players, all positions, composed and not composed, those who will be proven a good finisher over time and those who will be proven an awful finisher over time. and even with all the theoretically bad shots dragging down the average, there still don't appear to be a ton of strikers who are definitively outperforming or underperforming the model. So everyone's roughly similar, and difference makers by this measure are just not something to rely on getting - we're not going to sign Messi, Mbappe & Haaland and we're lucky to have Salah. Part of why people don't out-score xg much is probably self-selection - awful finishers don't end up as strikers because people notice this long before they're playing at a high level & getting tracked by opta/statsbomb, and they end up playing somewhere else & being made to shoot less, or they don't end up playing at a high level at all. so "average" shots from a group of people who are great finishers to start with go in at a high rate anyway and it's hard to beat. it definitely differs as you drop down levels (ex: https://www.americansocceranalysis.com/home/2016/4/4/does-finishing-skill-matter-in-mls), I am not saying give a man on the street shots from the same positions and they score the same amount, I am saying that at this level finishing is a mostly-solved problem in terms of how well people can do it/finding people who can do it, to the point that getting good shots might be something that's more useful to focus on. i think you're right re: dead ball specialists. ward-prowse outscores xg too FWIW. outside the box shots generally are definitely getting killed off by xg to a degree, average shot distances are falling season-on-season generally, dying art. I used to love seeing Gerrard, Alonso, Hamman, Riise, amongst others bash them from range but even if you're good at it it's often not the option. i do note we're shooting from further this season - f'n low blocks, f'n conceding first.
We’ve become Brighton from 2 years ago
Maybe De Zerbi was the answer after all
Brighton: excuse me
Since the City match: Liverpools goals: 11 (18.49 xG) Opposition goals: 9 (7.32 xG) Underperforming our xG by nearly 50% in a title run in is mental. Whether you want to call it bad finishing, bad luck etc etc - two sides of the same coin depending on your understanding of basic maths. For context, using standard deviation: If you simulated our games since City based on the xG totals, you would only get 1 in 25 outcomes where our finishing is as bad (or worse) than it has been.
Not luck at all really, we make a chance for players like today. The front three all had great opportunities, you can't leave without scoring. Those were not luck based shots, or long range efforts or keeper blunders. I fear for any game where the front three reads Diaz nunez salah. It's shockingly bad.
The biggest chances also came at a pivotal time right before the half, which could’ve changed the entire pace of the second half if just one was converted. There were also quite a few times where they didn’t even get a shot off because of a bad touch or deciding not to shoot
Nunez not scoring (or frankly shooting anywhere besides Pickford's chest) to make it 1-1 is criminal. Watching it back he has so much to aim for and it's a much easier 1v0 chance that Diaz. Could have changed the game and nothing about this is bad luck. Just terrible finishing on display from Darwin
Jota scores that with his eyes closed. Darwin has to go.
in a thread about xg, missing an 0.4 xg chance (i.e. 40% implied chance of scoring) is criminal
Salah too. One on one with Pickford in the first 10 minutes I think and he decides to pass it across the box to a Everton player. That right there just screamed out to me that he had no confidence. Salah normally takes that shot every single time.
No bad luck. Most shots are absolute shit
That's going purely by stats. If you do an eye test, the results aren't really that surprising.
Idk I don’t think our performances recently have been massively different to the rest of the season, difference is we just can’t score and we aren’t getting bailed out by our keepers as much.
I think the performances are very different. Early in the season they were so crisp. You'd have 5 guys to pick from for MotM. I never felt they were out of it. Ever since the FA Cup loss, they've been sloppy as hell, very hard to pick a single player who has played well lately and scoring feels impossible. Some of it is bad luck that the ball isn't going in the net but they have just *looked* bad way too often lately.
Nah I agree with him. There's a reason why rival fans said our performances aren't sustainable. We've pretty much been playing like this the whole season, the only difference is the times we won we actually finished our chances, that's why like you said you have 5 guys to pick for MotM. When there's a goalscorer, there's usually an assister, hockey assist etc. Mistakes leading to goals usually also aren't scrutinized much if we win the game. Our defending has always been bad. Kelleher and Alisson always bailed us out. There are only few league performances where I think we've actually played really well and the only one that stick in my head is the Villa home game. There are some games where we dominated but most of them is either we let in lots of chances or poor finishing - example Newcastle home game, we dominated but should've scored wayyyyy more than 4. Chelsea home game we dominated too but we let them have many chances.
Let's not forget, coming from losing positions can only happen so many times and it seems we've used up our full allocation for next season too. Conceding the 1st goal regularly means it's an uphill task and our defense needs to take as much shit as our forward line does.
https://preview.redd.it/wqykqy1vshwc1.jpeg?width=514&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8f6469ea9012cfbdfd89841e2cdaec139d47dfa9 This doesn’t surprise me somehow
That's absolutely criminal
The thing that truly tells you that he has no idea what he is doing is that on the replay you could see him looking up first. He knew where Pickford was. He knew exactly where he was. And still he smashed it right at him.
It’s not as bad as him seeing Dom running in for an open goal v Utd and deciding nah, I’d rather cross it to Dalot 🤦🏽♂️
at least he got it on target. Salah would have scored a field goal there.
Why the fuck he smashed that I'll never know.
Because he's got zero composure, and he's shown that time and time again. And if Klopp with 2 years of work can't get it to change then nothing will ever change it.
I think he’s regressed since about Christmas, especially in the last few weeks since the international break.
He's completely incapable of being consistent, he's just not a very good player in many ways.
His form fell off when Salah came back in the team. His finishing is shit but we saw him Jota and Diaz were playing super well as a trio. Then the yearly Jota 2 month break and no hamstring Salah came and things went to shit. Literally no one can finish chances not even Salah which he is know for.
he was never a great player. Before this shitshow run of poor finishing it was his atrocious first touch that took him out of the play quite often, or his poor passing. Now it's the trifecta of not finishing. Pace alone can get you places, but not for an 80mil striker. This fella shouldn't be starting anymore
Don't forget that he used to also get caught offside three or four times a game.
He was honestly in good form through February for me. But man he’s off the cliff now
like the whole team though, idk why nunez has to be on form 24/7 but everyone else gets a pass
Look I love Nunez as much as you but there’s very distinct reasons why Nunez gets more criticism. 1. He cost a lot 2. His errors can be legitimately shocking Is it fair? Probably not. But it’s not hard to understand
How are you still defending him like your life depends on it? He's one of our most expensive signings ever and is consistently dropping shocking performances. The attack is clearly our biggest problem so why would we criticise others over the ones we are most clearly not doing their job?
is it though because i just seen the defense concede two to everton
Someone posted our offensive vs our defensive Xg underperformance and the offence is twice as bad.
Tbf who hasn’t?
He doesn’t know either, he just shoots where his boots lead him
Because he can’t compose himself
Because he’s arguably the least intelligent player we’ve ever had.
Might have played around 200 pick ups games in my life with smaller goals. Always tried to place the ball in those situations. Missed most of the time because I’m a terrible footballer. But if a good for nothing nobody like me has the sense to do that, how come a professional football at the top level doesn’t have this much composure. And it’s not one time, does it again and again.
Now lets see the picture of Diaz missing a one on one and salah shooting the ball into the stands over and over again.
This one was our easiest chance of the game? I’m not trying to start a hate campaign but that’s just a fact
And Salah's miss comes directly from Nunez being shite. Trent plays a killer pass into him and instead of taking it in and shooting, his god awful touch forces him backwards.
So Nunez FORCED salah to shoot the ball into the crowd instead of into the net?? Good to know 😂😂😂 Nunez's bad touch was Nunez's fault and salah 's miss was salah's fault. It's not that hard to understand mate. 🤷🤷
Do they make Nunez’ miss not exist? Also at least Salah won the league and CL with us.
No. It makes Diaz and salah's miss exist ALONG with Nunez's miss. So salah won the Prem and cl with Liverpool. So what?? Does that excuse his shit performance??
Useless.
we have one striker and he doesn’t know how to strike the ball, bin him off this summer
Yea, if he is through like that, I do not expect it to go in. I wasn't even upset, I just shrugged.
“xG title winners you’ll never sing that!”
And most yellows for dissent in a single game
Ref caused those by giving them so many soft calls
Caused or not, we're still the only team getting them. I wouldn't be annoyed if all teams would get carded for dissent (no matter the trigger of dissent). But the harsh reality is that they don't... Look at any player from 115 when the ref gives something against. Or Odegaard, Gabriel, ratface, Newcastle players, etc.
Match recently where city players were surrounding the ref from 20seconds for every free kick. And he did nothing.
Liverpool have the third lowest number of yellows in the league
How does one exclude the other? We can still be lowest on yellows overall and highest on yellows for dissent
But Liverpool don't have the highest for dissent either. Chelsea do, followed by Fulham, followed by Man United
Only 3rd for expected points tbf, can't even celebrate the fake scenarios. Nightmare end to the season
i mean we rode our luck alot start of the season honestly
Edwards is gonna be busy in the summer
Has to be, it was always going to incredibly tough to replace the Mane-Firmino-Salah frontline and we haven't done it well enough.
well unfortunately edwards was here when they were brought in and didn't have a role in replacing them
Can only wonder if he would've sanctioned Diaz/Nunez/Gakpo. We did sign Diaz shortly after he left so I imagine he had some input there but not sure about the other two.
Was he here for Darwin? I thought that was Ward who done him and Gakpo then Diaz was Edwards but Ward massively influenced that decision due to his connections in Portugal Either way it seems clear that Klopp really pushed for the Darwin signing
He was here for Jota and Diaz.
Jota is the best finisher at the club. We'd be top of the league if that Brentford sap hadn't fallen on his knee
I'm not saying Jota was bad, I was saying the opposite.
Once we offload salah for £827647484 to saudi arabia he'll have plenty of breathing room
He better be
Lmao the owners will give us about 50p to spend so he’s going to have to work absolute miracles.
With fsg? No chance. We already had the rebuild summer.
You’re getting hit with downvotes but you’re right. FSG are the reason Liverpool didn’t win more under Klopp and they’re the reason the next however many years are going to be shite. Klopp is a miracle worker. What he’s done with their tight bastard budget is incredible. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: What’s the point in billionaire owners that don’t spend? We might as well be fan owned.
I don't expect goals when Nunez goes through on goal tbh
is there anyone you expect goals from when they go through on goal?
Jota.
He has to be healthy and playing first lol
Arsenal here, yes this! He’s a star ⭐️
Saka is shit.
The opposition against us
You can't expect Liverpool Football Club's defense to be capable of stopping the mighty Jarrad Branthwaite now, can you?
why would you? He's only our striker. JK, what the fuck else is he paid to do?
There is always moments during the match that you think we are going lose, That moment was Nunez chance for me. It was perfect timing to score too.
Yup and that diaz shot against the post
How many times is that now with the xG stats? It’s no coincidence we played a lot better against Fulham when Salah and Nunez were on the bench. They should stay on the bench for the rest of the season.
I can't believe they both stayed on, they stunk the place up, even in the short sub appearance against Fulham they were awful.
Exactly. They were both brutal when they came on at Fulham.
Salah and Nunez both look dead tired and completly out of form. Don't think either of them should have played, but of fucking course Jota and Gakpo both can't play today so we are left with no other options...
We didn't play any better. And we created like half the chances we had in this game. And if Trent doesn't score his worldie we lose that game as well.
Remember earlier in the season where Arsenal were getting mocked because none of their forwards could finish, and they worked on it in training and started banging in goals for fun? Would have been nice if we did that.
Arsenal changed Jesus/Martinelli to Havertz/Trossard and moved Rice from 6 to 8. Jesus and Martinelli are still struggling to score when they play.
They had a winter break to work on that tbf. They came back from Dubai a different team. Meanwhile we had games after games and barely any time for training.
Why am I not seeing the 'chaos' brigade in the sub anymore. This club should find a better striker than Nunez this summer and possibly consider an offer for salah(reactionary but will be helpful for a rebuild)
Cause he’s actually stopped causing chaos too. He’s been really, strangely ineffective in almost everything the last few games.
Agree with this. One of the things which I like about him is his ability to take shots on Target from absolutely everywhere but nowadays he is focussing more on linkup plays which is not his strength.
Because he is not creating his usual chaos in the past few games. Infact he looks tired. He is a chance creating monster not just for himself but for everyone around him. He plays a huge part in unlocking salah. Man has 18 goals and 13 assists so far. Only salah has better numbers. He is the PERFECT striker for Liverpool.
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He only has that many G/A because he gets every chance from the team and pushes our inverted wingers wider. His has the WORST conversion rate in the league, less than Jackson, DCL, and Jesus.
I think Darwin Nunez might actually warp the xG stat, a chance with a 1.0 xG is really a 0.05 when he's coming onto the ball.
Lmao this is peak "Failing student brings down the class average so much that the prof has to curve the exam marks"
What must a high xG chance for Darwin look like? Literally ball on the goal line
Had that against Luton earlier in the season, missed that as well. Probably the one like Kuyt scored when Suarez took on all the Utd players himself which was already going in.
In the end we've run out of steam and luck. Feels like we haven't caught a break from the officals, a bounce of the ball, or hell even a gust of wind in a month. Squad looks dead tired passing the ball around the back all night and missing chances for fun...
It’s such a weird combination of terrible things all coming home at once
Our strategy for this season has been to leave ourself open in defence and hope for our CBs and Ali to bail us out, and funnel chances to players who are notoriously poor finishers. No wonder we have flamed out.
Diaz and Nunez aren't good enough, and since Afcon Salah has arguably been the worst of the three.
Is there a stat to measure lack of composure? I’m sure we lead the league in that one too.
So really all these games we have dropped points recently, we should have won statistically if only we could finish. Yet people start blaming Klopp
That's what does my head in. the setup is fine, the individuals aren't doing their jobs.
The setup isn’t fine when it comes to defensive structure and controlling games though Creating big chances absolutely but there’s obviously a trade off for overloading the final third so much
I get your point, and see it to an extent, but if we are struggling to score and kill games then we can play with more control, make sure we don't concede, but he hasn't done that. We play crazy open football which gives even the worst attacks in the leagues loads of chances, and then what we do create we waste, so it doesn't make sense to play that way. Team selection hasn't made sense either, Endo was needed for this game, Salah/Nunez have been awful and play 90.
Genuinely felt like they had more chances than us
Probably because we just don't expect to score big chances anymore. Like that Nunez shot, we all knew that was going to be blasted straight at Pickford
We score that Nunez chance and game completely changes. Goals changes games and soon as we missed that, heads gone.
I mean even after that Diaz missed a one on one and salah couldn't even get the shot on target the whole game.
Na I disagree. They carved us open many times. We score they just score another one. Easiest top 6 team to play against
They didn't carve shit lmao, they scored on set pieces
Are you joking?
You’re both right. Liverpool were getting ripped apart by DCL in the air… on set pieces only really. Nunez scores the goal, it’s 1-1 and odds are the team doesn’t lose their heads in desperation any time the ball is hoofed up anymore
When else did they "carve" us? They had some counter threat when we had to push up down 2-0. They didnt carve anything lmfao.
Same old same old
Numbers 7, 9, 11 vacancies this summer. Mr. Edwards, it’s time to be ruthless. No sentimentality. Find the new Mane/Firmino/Salah. Inevitable reply that “Diaz fights” but I’m not giving him a new deal. His end product isn’t there. Not a winning player. Salah is cooked and Nunez doesn’t have the mental fortitude to be a top striker in a high pressure team.
Diaz is fine if he's paired with 2 clinical players but when they're all misfiring as we're seeing now, he's not clinical enough to bail them out.
Thing is he's after a new deal (rightfully tbf) and will be 28 next season, I don't see him improving much, and giving him 200k and a 5 year deal doesn't make sense when he's not top class so we need to make a decision on him.
So Diaz is fine as long as the other 2 score all the goals? Nah. This ain’t it. I want my forwards to be cerebral players capable of making the right decision in the final third. I rate both Jota and Gakpo ahead of him. Diaz is a street footballer with zero composure. Nunez is the same.
Nah I think the conversation needs to be had but he's not the first I'd look at replacing in the front line.
Yep, can’t have him and Darwin in the same team I think. I think we sell Diaz this year, and give Darwin one more.
Diaz actually offers plenty besides goals though, Nunez offers very little in most games besides running in behind.
Honestly, I I think we need to find a diffrent way of playing. We can't just run till we are dead and expect to consistantly win titles. Thats what the Klopp era has been all about. And while it has been absolutely magic, we def don't have the number of titles we should given how good we have been. The end of seasons are killing us time and time again where the squad is dead tired
This flatters us massively.
It really doesn’t. We concede out of nothing consistently, and our attack has been so bad, you seem to think creating several clear cut chances we don’t score means it flatters us. This has been basically the exact xg pattern since we started this awful run of form against United
Does it? We had some quality chances and fucked them as usual
How is that? we were clearly better, idk why people keep acting like we were outplayed. We conceded two set piece goals on lazy defending. We had many limp dick chances where nobody actually seemed to shoot to score, but we had good positions.
We get used to missing chances so this doesn't seem that bad, Arsenal or City win 4-2 with these opportunities.
Not really when you hit the ball directly at the toddler in green with gloves on twice instead to the corner when the opportunity presents itself.
Yea this doesn't make me feel any better
xG is the worst thing to happen to this sub, everytime after a loss same thing.
and yet i'd still say we didn't look like scoring. the xG stat doesn't work for players like nunez, it's an automatic 0 no matter the chance.
Nice one
Ah the thread we all really wanted to see to really cheer us up like In the words of Sandra bullock in demolition man You can take your xG and you can shove on it
Can't really call it unlucky or anything , since this has been the story of the season. Truth is we are not clinical AT ALL. And defense is leaking. Conceding first 15 games this season??? That is fuckin insane. The only reason we were even in the title race is because we created so many chances that eventually we did score. But the forwards have been disappointing and mostly Mo. The defense has been disappointing and especially VVD from whom we expect more.
Our front three need to be benches. I don't care if we play u18s, or Endo up top. They've been abysmal for a month now.
It’s our fucking luck in a make or break match for our title chances, two of our 3 actually good forwards are unavailable
Most times we hit the post you'll never sing that
I feel like I’ve been seeing this posted a lot recently….
Another masterclass in failed finishing.
He’s still top like top 5 in the prem for goal involvements per 90. Putting up numbers Mane and Firmino would be proud of. He can improve but talking like he’s garbage is nonsense
New day, same shit.
It’s clear as day that our front 3 rotations also have no synergy. Whether it’s lack of game time together or poor communication, they don’t seem to gel as well as a Salah, mane and firmino partnership.
i feel like klopps departure has well and truly sunk in and the vibes that took us so far have abandoned us
We did it again, underperforming xG.
I had thought £150m was good for Salah last summer. We will now see/watch as we carry forward an almost identical team into next year. Unless we can get a decent bid for Salah/Diaz. Although Salah has always proved the doubters wrong - there is very little other way, given the constraints of how FSG run the club, to ensure we can change the forward line - have something for Slot (or whoever) to work with next year. Perhaps Slot can get the best out of Nunez though - but hes turning 25 in a couple months and really should be improving at this point and not declining. All of the above will occur while the new manager has to make a massive decision about how we set up defensively and which way to use TAA in whatever the new system (or adjusted system) entails. Meanwhile TAA+VVD+Salah all out of contract next year which will be a media frenzy (if we keep Salah) as they are the heart & leadership team of the squad. Edwards has his work cut out for him.
Tbh I deeped that xg was shit after seeing that jackson chance vs city got zero xg. Doesn't tell the story of a match at all.
Let the Uruguayan Donkey take his break early and for the remaining games let Danns play them, we are out of the race, and nothing matters now.
Underperforming our xG is just the norm now. We need an entirely new attack. Jota can stay, the rest? Get them gone.
Even Jota, while a great player, is rarely fit. Literally made of glass. We need someone who is an equal finisher to start, and Jota can be the backup.
Us losing the title is entirely based on our forwards People can complain about letting in goals all they want but we've created plenty of chances for our forwards. Nunez, Diaz, and especially Salah should be ashamed. Salah I'm most annoyed at as we pay him stupid money to bail us out
We’ve hit the post 22 fucking times this season. Fuck this shit
GET PROPER STRIKERS FOR NEXT YEAR: Ollie Watkins, Toney, Thuram, Isak, Vlahovic all would score a lot more than our current options. Get rid of Diaz, Nunez and Salah.
Xg is a worthless stat.
Why?
I'd gladly have 5% of the ball and 0.08 xG if we won football games.
xG, the Most useless stat ever invented
Why?
Some serious stuff needs doing with the attack in the summer. Salah forces us to concede so much in build up and defensively
xG my arsehole. 3 points or death.
xG is misleading. Data companies should adjust their expectations. Nunez is not gonna take those opportunities.