Stat of the Match: Liverpool 0-1 Nottingham Forest
Trent Alexander-Arnold and Mohamed Salah's stats highlight the Reds' woes in Arne Slot's first defeat as Liverpool head coach.
Arne Slot hit the first bump in his Liverpool road as the Reds were defeated by Nottingham Forest at Anfield on Saturday. There is much to ponder for the Dutchman.
It’s striking how some themes of the early weeks of season went from positives to, if not negatives, then far less important once delivered in a below-par performance. Diogo Jota not heavily involved but having the joint-most shots? Check. Liverpool conceding very few shots while the game was goalless? Indeed. The Reds focussing on creating chances in the box with minimal use of wasteful long-range efforts? Very much so.
A breakdown of the latter begins to reveal the problems Liverpool had. Slot’s men had 14 shots which were collectively valued at 0.9 expected goals against Forest, per FBRef. Having so many efforts for such little return is not completely abnormal, with over 200 examples found in the last seven years of Premier League football.
The average distance of the shots - 14.9 yards - was decent enough too. But if you refine those 200+ examples to those that saw the average goal attempt taken from no further out than Liverpool’s were on Saturday, there are only two prior instances since the summer of 2017. It is incredibly rare to shoot as often and as close without ‘expecting’ to score one goal.
Notice that the other teams lost too. They were Brentford and the Everton of Rafa Benitez; not super-direct teams in the context of the glorious history of English football but they were not playing tiki-taka either.
Herein lies the key to the Forest game. The Reds had six shots from within the danger zone, the region of the penalty area which covers the width of the six-yard box from the goal line to the edge of the box. Five of them were headers - denoted on the map below with triangles at their bases - which are lower value, harder to convert opportunities.
Without being able to check for this area of the pitch specifically, in only nine of Liverpool’s preceding 269 league games were a higher proportion of their total shots taken with a head.
Forest deserve credit for the Reds’ failing to create well-located efforts from feet. While there’s no explicit metric for ‘parking the bus’, it didn’t feel like Nuno Espírito Santo’s side did anyway. They simply maintained a compact, disciplined shape and challenged Liverpool to break through.
Per Mark Stats, Forest’s average defensive action was 38.7 metres from their goal; closer than any of the Reds’ previous opponents in 2024/25, but hardly camped out on the edge of their box (as their average positions in the chart below prove). Liverpool’s problem was one of passing, with contrasting issues on each flank.
The trio on the left of the attack rarely lost the ball. Luis Díaz, Alexis Mac Allister and Andy Robertson collectively completed 94 per cent of their 116 passes, per Fantasy Football Scout.
However, just two of them went into the penalty area, with 63 per cent of their passes going backward or square. This is in itself is not an issue, with ball recycling essential when probing for a weakness in the opposition back line. The problem occurred when possession reached the trio on the other side of the field, who were incredibly wasteful.
Of the players who attempted more than 13 passes in the contest, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Mohamed Salah and Dominik Szoboszlai had the worst three success rates. The triangle on the Reds’ right had a collective pass completion percentage that was 21 points lower than their colleagues on the left. Each man attempted at least 43 passes while succeeding with no more than 75 per cent of them.
Liverpool averaged three league games per campaign in which at least three of their players hit those two benchmarks across the last seven seasons. Two such matches per year saw both full-backs attempting plenty of passes with low accuracy, though, trying things on opposite sides. Against Forest, the ball got stuck outside the penalty box on the left or disappeared into a vortex on the right.
Ten years and a day earlier, Liverpool were beaten 1-0 by Aston Villa. It was the previous example of them losing a home league game directly following an international break. Supporters were only present for three defeats without the Reds scoring in the intervening decade.
The problem for Liverpool, if not entirely down to Slot, is that there hadn’t been an Anfield league loss to nil in front of fans since 2016 before it happened twice in the last five home matches. At least in defeat to Crystal Palace the Reds generated 2.7 expected goals, even if the proportion of headed shots was higher.
This match was far, far more concerning for the long term than that loss was.
I've just posted this on the Distance Covered article about the game (https://distancecovered.substack.com/p/liverpool-and-the-heel-of-achilles/), so makes sense to share here too:
The end of the game was a mess. What concerns me is that there was no improvement after half time, never mind following the substitutions.
Quiet first halves were more common under Klopp than collective memory probably recalls. In eight home league games last season, Liverpool had no more than one big chance in the first half, which is what they had on Saturday.
But they then averaged 14.5 shots, 4.5 on target and 2.3 big chances in the second halves of those games in 2023/24. Those respective figures against Forest? Eight, three and zero. The occasions they didn't beat those numbers from Saturday after poor first halves last term? One, two and zero.
There should've been more of a response after the break and it wasn't there.
Excellent thoughts. I think we all knew that this new approach would be tested in a 0-0 on 65’. And this was it.
We failed. I wondered what the plan was and was full of optimism when the three subs came on. “What does Slot have up his sleeve for this inevitable type of match?”
It was pretty awful. The players, as you pointed out, really didn’t hit their passes. But it was a real come down from the emotional highs and lows under Klopp.
Let’s hope we can muster more of a response against Bournemouth if it is 0-0 on the hour.
I must say that I didnt feel great about the Palace loss either: we just conceded too many chances. But we did make more. I found both losses concerning in their own way.
I hope there is a way forward that doesn’t just open us up.