The Change Which Explains Liverpool's Improved Attack

Arne Slot's tactics aren't wildly different from those used by Jürgen Klopp. One slight change may show why Liverpool's attack is more efficient now though.

The previous edition of this newsletter made the bold suggestion that Liverpool have one of the best attacking processes of the Premier League data era, so, by extension, of all time. That conclusion was reached by virtue of them taking a high proportion of their shots from inside the penalty area when also putting an elite level of efforts on target.

Basic Stats Suggest Liverpool Have The Best Attack In The Premier League's Data Era

It clearly resonated with Arne Slot’s men. The Reds played Tottenham Hotspur on Thursday evening, firing off 24 of their 26 shots from within the penalty area. Opening goal scorer Cody Gakpo had five attempts in the 18-yard-box, as many shots as Spurs had in total, never mind from within reasonable range of Caoimhín Kelleher’s goal. No wonder the Dutch forward mustered roughly as many expected goals as Tottenham did across the two legs of the tie.

The aim of the previous article was to prove how strong Liverpool are using very basic statistics which were available over 20 years ago. With the xG value of any individual shot questionable at best, miles off at worst, there’s a case to be made that knowing if an attempt was in the box and on target might be just as useful. Maybe more so. Who wants to bother with decimal points?

As interesting as the previous findings were, to be able to explain how the shift has occurred requires a dig around in more detailed data. The obvious place to start was to look at how many passes the Reds make into opposition boxes, as to take more shots from the best locations, they have to get the ball there somehow.

Yet their average for this statistic has dropped from 13.3 per game in 2023/24 to 12.5 this season. We will compare the change in figures between the two campaigns for 11 players: forwards, midfielders and full-backs with at least 629 minutes in the Premier League this term (as it’s always good to include Diogo Jota whenever possible).

There have been decent gains on this metric from Mohamed Salah and Trent Alexander-Arnold, but their colleagues have either held their rate at best or diminished. There must be another reason for Liverpool’s increased penalty box potency.