Champions of xG? Why Liverpool’s historic night sent a message to their title rivals

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Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool had scored seven goals in a Premier League game. They had conceded seven in one, too, a night at Villa Park that had the historians scanning back to 1963 to find a time a Liverpool team had been breached so often. What they had never done – in part because no one else had done in a top-flight English game – was to amass an expected goals of 7.27. Which, as such records date back to 2010-11, means the most in around 5,000 matches.

Champions of xG, you’ll never sing that? Perhaps. There are more important markers. As Liverpool went three points clear at the top of the table, they moved past Manchester City in the xG charts. Yet the statistic that mattered most at Anfield was 4-2, not 7.27. There was nevertheless something blisteringly brilliant: not about the number in itself, but the manner of the performance that created it. Newcastle United finished ahead of Liverpool last season, competed in the Champions League this, have clean sheets against Arsenal and AC Milan and Manchester City and Manchester United to their name in the current campaign. They were hit for 7.27: not in the actual scoreline, which had a respectability, but in the measure of the opportunities.

For the second time in three league matches at Anfield, Liverpool had 34 shots, equalling their own record for the most in a game in a division by anyone this season. Yet too many of those against Manchester United were from long range, of limited threat. Against Newcastle, it was about the quantity of chances, but also the quality. Penalties tend to be valued at 0.76 of a goal in the xG figures: Mohamed Salah took two, missing one. “The xG of the two penalties is huge, one I didn’t think was and the other was very soft,” argued Newcastle manager Eddie Howe. That still left an open-play figure of around 5.5.

“I didn’t have to look at the stats because I saw it [in the game], it was really special,” said Klopp. The more critical could simply call it a failure of finishing that meant Liverpool had to carry on attacking. It said something, though, that a goalkeeper who conceded four was arguably man of the match. “It was [Martin] Dubravka but it was ourselves as well,” Klopp said. “There were moments where we forced it, when the technique was not great, but then there were moments when Dubravka had a top save as well. We didn’t stop: that’s the most important thing.”

And if it takes a constant commitment to attacking to reach 7.27, the suddenly mythical number, a couple of idiosyncratic, irrepressible players help. One of them did not end up on the scoresheet. Defiantly different in every respect, Darwin Nunez is better at amassing expected goals than actual goals. He is the great statistical outlier. He averaged the most shots per 90 minutes this season even before having eight in the 64 before his substitution. He now only has one goal in his last 14 outings. “As long as Darwin has all these moments today, it’s all fine,” said Klopp, who savoured his assist for Salah’s first goal. “I would say everybody in the stadium would have tried to hammer that ball through the goalie just to make it happen. He squares that ball: incredible.”

Then there is Salah, who scored two goals, who was involved in two more, whose drive was summed up when he was still surging forward in stoppage time, searching for a hat-trick. “Mo is a goalscoring machine,” said Klopp. “Nobody should be now really surprised that Mo can change a game because he did it hundreds of times.”

In their own ways, Nunez and Salah are signs of Klopp’s philosophy, of what he wants in a forward. There is a breed of forward who can be anonymous but get one chance and take it. There are others who are ubiquitous and, at times, profligate. Klopp prefers the men who are likelier to wreak havoc to the silent killers.

He cited Salah’s refusal to be cowed by the spot kick he spurned in the first half. “It’s just a really good example; the more goals you have, the more you are used to missing chances, even when it’s a penalty,” he explained. “And the more you just understand what you have to do: keep going and if necessary – which is very often the case – keep improving, using situations better. And that’s what Mo did.”

He was aided and abetted by Diogo Jota, the specialist at ghosting into space, by Luis Diaz and his series of driving runs, by Cody Gakpo, showing more of a focus on scoring than usual, by Curtis Jones, whose work off the ball may support Klopp’s theory that pressing is the best playmaker. It took them all, the wildness and chaos they created, to amass 34 shots. “We scored four goals, which is already an outstanding number,” added Klopp. But the history-making 7.27 stands out still more.