Liverpool's Best Big Chance Finisher? It's not Mohamed Salah

Now you're interested. Which Liverpool forward has the best record for converting big chances since Arne Slot took charge?

Mar 24, 2025

Federico Chiesa was recently kind enough to provide a potential answer to a question that football fans love to debate in bars and Viennese coffee houses.

It’s the last minute of a cup final and your player is clean through on goal. Who do you want to be in position to take the shot?

The idea is for it to be a winning goal rather than a barely deserved consolation, but the Italian’s finish against Newcastle in the Carabao Cup final was unerring. Unlike the linesman at the Liverpool end of Wembley.

Just as Chiesa has been involved in moves leading to goals more frequently than any other Liverpool player this season (per 90 minutes), so he leads the same standings for non-penalty big chance contributions.

These are the opportunities classified by Opta as those where converting the shot is a reasonable expectation. As smoothly as the former Juventus forward slotted the ball past Nick Pope last weekend, it was the first such chance he has put away for the Reds.

With his limited opportunities to play limiting his opportunities to have high value chances, Chiesa has only had five which the official data provider rated as big. Had he scored one more he’d be at league average for conversion, yet he looks way off the pace instead. Such are the perils of small sample sizes.

Arne Slot’s other five senior forwards have all had at least 14 if we exclude penalties, with four of them breaking the 20 mark. Based on their conversion rates this season, who would you want to be one-on-one with a goalkeeper in the final minute of a cup final? It’s got to be Mohamed Salah, right?

Wrong. Here’s how Liverpool forwards have performed with Opta-defined big chances in 2024/25.

5. Darwin Núñez: 6 goals from 20 (30% converted)

Well, it is at least an improvement on last season (19%). It’s hardly a surprise to see Darwin Núñez propping up the rest of his front line colleagues though.

His miss at Villa Park is the one from this season which springs to mind most readily for any player, irrespective of any potential recency bias. Núñez also squandered big chances in the 3-3 draw at Newcastle as well as in cup defeats to Tottenham (no big deal) and Plymouth (slightly more of one).

He has put away a golden opportunity to put Liverpool 1-0 up four times this season, most notably in stoppage time at Brentford. It’s nice to finish on a positive but there have been far too many lows among the occasional highs with Darwin.

4. Diogo Jota: 8/22 (36%)

Diogo Jota converted 40.9% of his big chances during his first campaign with Liverpool in 2020/21. His rate across his five seasons in red is identical.

Considering his reputation for finishing, it’s surprising he has only been a percentage point or two above par with such a big sample.

And as much as Núñez’s woes draw the most attention, Jota is bottom of the pile for proportion of big chances put on target this season (55%). He hasn’t tested the goalkeeper with any of his last four, which include one each in the draw at Aston Villa and the cup exits to Paris Saint-Germain and Newcastle.

The boy’s in a finishing rut. But maybe he’s less consistent than you think anyway?

3. Mohamed Salah: 13/33 (39%)

There must be very few things at which Salah has been Premier League average this season. Here is one of them.

Even then, it needs to be put into context. The Egyptian king has missed one big chance in a match Liverpool failed to win. One. It was at the Kop end in the Reds’ previous home game, if you’re wondering.

Adding in the 26 he has created for others means Salah has directly contributed to over a third of Liverpool’s big chances. The vagaries of finishing are summed up by the difference in conversion rates for the high value shots he has created in the last two years; 8/29 (28%) in 2023/24 versus 16/26 (62%) this season.

Assist tallies live and die by this stuff.

2. Cody Gakpo: 7/14 (50%)

Overlaying Cody Gakpo’s xG maps for league and Europe from The Analyst shows why he has been so productive with big chances this season.

Look at that back post gold. Getting the ball to the Netherlands international in the six-yard box will lead to a goal more often than not.

Aside from a first half miss against Manchester United, Gakpo’s big chance failures have occurred in Liverpool victories. And if that wasted opportunity against the Red Devils bugs you thanks to who the opposition were, consider some of the teams the Dutchman has converted against this term: Bayer Leverkusen, Real Madrid, Manchester City, Ipswich Town.

Big league champions, all the greats.

1. Luis Díaz: 12/22 (55%)

Luis Díaz is an excellent player. An elite dribbler, he adds so much in ball progression terms. If only he could deliver a similarly high level of goal output.

The 28-year-old has at least broadly converted for Slot when he should have. Remarkably, the Colombian has only scored one goal in all competitions in 2024/25 that wasn’t from a big chance. Any guesses which goal it was?1

Díaz was at 38% for this metric last season, two from four in an injury-plagued 2022/23 and 38% in first half season in England. Hot streak or not, when it comes to putting away should-score opportunities this season, Lucho is the Liverpool king.