Liverpool's Record for Opposition Fouls and Yellow Cards

The foul numbers suggest Liverpool have been hard done by in the 2024/25 Premier League. The yellow card statistics tell a different tale.

Football fans are all conspiracy theorists. Every referee has it in for your favourite team while that other club gets all the decisions they need. There is no justice.

Tosin Adarabioyo bringing down Diogo Jota when he was clean through on goal? No red card. Joe Gomez taken out in the box against Fulham? No penalty. Wataru Endō being almost bisected by Julio Enciso? A yellow card will suffice for that, it was only GBH.

And so on. A Liverpool supporter will easily recall these incidents, whereas most controversial decisions involving other teams will be long forgotten. It makes an unbiased analysis near-impossible. Even so, data for fouls and cards provides some interesting talking points at the very least.

For instance, the Reds have made 1.8 fouls per game more than they have been fouled by opponents in the 2024/25 Premier League. This seems strange for a table topping side that averages 57.7 per cent possession, playing more of the passes in 17 of their 23 matches.

On one hand, the rate has improved from the 2.2 foul difference Liverpool averaged last season. On the other, only once in the last seven seasons did either Arsenal or Manchester City go above 0.7, with the latter hitting 1.7 in 2019/20. That doesn’t sit quite right.

The most important thing to remember with everything which follows is that fouls are not equal. Brighton’s Pervis Estupiñán proved as much by committing eight at Anfield in November without being cautioned, equalling the Premier League record (since 2014) for most fouls without a yellow card. For referee Tony Harrington, it seems the ninth time must be the charm where Ecuadorians are concerned.

Despite this, the Reds of 2024/25 are currently setting a record of their own. Opposing players have committed 230 fouls against them, receiving 60 bookings in return, per FBRef. This rate of a yellow card per 3.8 fouls is the lowest of any side in the Premier League from the last eight campaigns. It suggests bookings are handed out more readily against Liverpool than they are versus other sides, though a review of the incidents shows some of why this has occurred.

Before we get to that, a question for you: which Liverpool player has been on the wrong end of the most fouls which led to opposition bookings this season? Cast your vote below before reading the rest of the article.

The idea for this investigation germinated during the Reds’ recent 2-0 win at Brentford, during which Christian Nørgaard was given a yellow for a foul on Alexis Mac Allister. Seeing the Argentine in a heap as the referee reached for his pocket felt like a very familiar sight. We’ll find out if it is.

As with many strands of football data, once you start digging into it, you realise how strange much of what goes on can be. This is undoubtedly true when it comes to how referees apply discipline to a game.

Three players have been booked for fouls against Liverpool when the match statistics show them as not having committed any. The reason? There is no free-kick if the referee plays advantage, so no foul is recorded even when he then books the miscreant at the end of the move. It makes sense, even if it looks initially like a data glitch.

Then there’s cautions for time wasting, a rule which appears to be very erratically applied. Nottingham Forest collected two cards for this offence in their victory at Liverpool, while Arsenal goalkeeper David Raya picked up one at the Emirates in the 2-2 draw there. Other than that, nada.

Weirdly, both Raya and his custodian colleague Matz Sels of Forest were booked in the 66th minute for time wasting. It’s a remarkable coincidence, unless referees’ patience is only legally allowed to last for 65 minutes.

We’ve also seen Gabriel Jesus and Nick Pope booked for dissent after the final whistle, Amad Diallo cautioned for excessively celebrating a goal he didn’t score and Nicolas Jackson given a yellow card for entering the penalty area to gee up Robert Sánchez ahead of Mohamed Salah’s spot kick against his former club.

Liverpool Data

Several players were booked for dissent after being penalised for a foul, not for the challenge itself, while Bournemouth’s Lewis Cook collected a card at Anfield for the same offence after Milos Kerkez conceded a free-kick for holding back Salah. Like all of us watching, Cook was probably just surprised the foul had been given at all.

To complete the set of somewhat unusual bookings, we have Ismaïla Sarr and Morgan Gibbs-White, both of whom were cautioned after a foul by a Liverpool player. Reviewing the footage, the latter unleashed the ‘give him a yellow card, ref’ gesture, so was bang to rights. It is unclear what so offended the Crystal Palace man regarding Kostas Tsimikas’ foul on Eddie Nketiah.

These examples illustrate why assessing fouls per yellow card can only be a guide, with bookings handed out for all manner of law violations.

The 2024/25 data also hints at why opponents have received a legendarily low level of second yellow cards against the Reds over the years. Prior to October 2023, the previous example of a player being sent off against Liverpool for two bookings was Sadio Mané for Southampton. Whatever happened to him? Never mind that for now, the gap between his red card and the next for a pair of bookable offences was four days shy of eight years.

Based on league average rate, the Reds should have expected to see 8.9 - let’s call it nine - opponents dismissed for two yellow cards across the last 10 seasons. In reality, there have been four: Mané, *two Olympiads*, Ashley Young, Jordan Ayew and Diogo Dalot.

Yet only 11 of the 60 players booked against Liverpool in 2024/25 committed a foul (never more than one) after the referee jotted their name down in his notebook. The only other indiscretion for three of them was a handball, it’s not as if they went crashing into an opponent. Of course, maybe some of the cautioned deserved to be penalised for another challenge, maybe even booked, but got away with it. If you want to unbiasedly watch all of the matches, record your findings and get back to me, I’ll be here waiting.

It is perhaps telling that 32 of the 48 cards handed out for fouling were for the first free-kick the player in question conceded, highlighting the likely serious nature of the infringement. Similarly, 26 of them were committed when the Reds were in the defensive half, when you might assume more attacking positions would draw card-worthy challenges.

But then defending teams don’t fly in with tackles as often when penned in deep, as they frequently are against Liverpool. It is counter-stopping fouls which more readily earn bookings, hence more of them occurring in the Reds’ own half.

For many of the points raised above, Cody Gakpo has been Liverpool’s star man. Fouls inflicted upon him have led to five yellow cards in the 2024/25 Premier League. Two were initially let go as advantage was played, three could be deemed as halting counter attacks and all five were the first foul committed by the cautioned player.

While he ticks a lot of boxes, Gakpo isn’t the leading man for suffering card inducing challenges. It isn’t Mac Allister either. The player in question is the surprise hit of the season. It’s Ryan Gravenberch.

The midfielder has been a constant threat to opposition disciplinary records in his new Liverpool position, since suffering his first such foul in the season opener at Ipswich. Gravenberch has also drawn challenges which merited bookings as early as the ninth minute, against Fulham, through to the 92nd, at Old Trafford. My hunch regarding Mac Allister wasn’t way off, but it’s his partner in the midfield two who takes this particularly painful crown.

If referees could begin awarding Liverpool even as many free-kicks as they concede, before we worry about the more that their dominance deserves, it would be a good start. It would be no bad thing to see the Reds’ Premier League record for fouls suffered per opposition yellow card come down a few points over the rest of the season.

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