If you happen to hold an interest in the data side of football then these are increasingly interesting times.
It’s not that long ago that a list of goal scorers in the back of a match day programme was about as far as statistics went.
Ten years ago, if you found a list of which players had created the most chances then as a fan you were probably at the forefront of the amateur analytics community.
Things have moved on significantly in the last decade, and particularly in the last year or two. The emergence of Statsbomb – who introduced public data on things like distance carrying the ball and pressing – has helped to push the conversation forward.
Stats Perform have responded with a new article which looks at aspects of off-ball work and provides glimpses at metrics which have previously been unavailable. Their numbers will make particularly interesting reading for Liverpool and their supporters.
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But first let’s step back to consider the simple numbers from last season, as they didn’t make happy reading for either Roberto Firmino or Sadio Mane.
Bobby scored just nine goals in all competitions, his lowest total since he was a 20-year-old at Hoffenheim in the 2012/13 campaign.
While his Senegalese counterpart netted 16 times, it was his worst return since he scored 13 goals in his debut season with the Reds.
Both have shown signs of recovery this summer, as Mane scored in three friendlies before Firmino rounded off the preparation period with a brace against Osasuna on Monday.
And the new data from Stats Perform gives an excellent insight into one of the reasons why they struggled at times last season.
It wasn’t for a lack of effort on their part, particularly when it came to Firmino. It has been revealed that the Brazilian made more runs into opposition penalty areas than every other player in the Premier League in 2020/21.
He wasn’t a small way ahead of the competition either, the gap was a chasm. Firmino made 544 runs into the box, which was 182 more than the next player in line, Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins. As the latter played more minutes, on a per 90 basis their figures were 17.2 and 9.8 respectively.
Mohamed Salah was third in the top flight standings, with 318 in total and 9.3 per 90 minutes, and he was closely followed by Mane (with 317 and 10.1 respectively).
So, if Firmino and Mane were putting the hard yards in and making their way into the box as frequently as they were, why didn’t they score more goals?
They both missed more chances than they should have, underperforming against their expected goal figures. That was clearly an enormous reason behind their relatively poor goal tallies.
But further newly available statistics illustrate that they were among the Premier League’s top three players for being pressured when they didn’t have the ball.
In other words, opposition defenders marked them and focussed on stopping the ball reaching them with a rarely seen intensity.
In this regard, Mane was the most closely watched player in the division, as he was pressured 376 times without the ball (which equates to 12 times per 90 minutes). Bruno Fernandes was next with 332 (9.6 per 90), closely followed by Firmino on 325 (10.3).
It’s interesting to see players four and five in the standings have both been linked with moves to Liverpool: Yves Bissouma (320, 9.2 per 90 minutes) and Adama Traore (295, 10.0). While this data is new to interested fans, has it played a part in the Reds’ recruitment strategy in recent times?
Whether it has or not, it’s reasonable to assume that the data team at the club will be aware of these statistics.
Let’s hope they can use them to figure out how to get Firmino and Mane away from opposing players and back towards scoring goals on a regular basis.
