Arsenal’s start to the season hasn’t been the toughest.
Going away to Manchester United is not an easy place for Arsenal to go to but United have pretty subsequently shown that they are still a team that is struggling and that they have not fixed all of their issues from last season.
Leeds have realistic chance of staying up and they are one of the better promoted teams in the last few years but it was still a promoted team at home and that is a match you expect to pick up a win in.
Overall, for the season with Arsenal it is six points with a good but expected win and a not-so-great performance but still a win.
Liverpool have a similar not so convincing start to the season but have come away with six points. They needed late goals after blowing 2-0 leads twice, including against a team down a man.
This sets this matchup as not just a big early six pointer in the title race but also an opportunity to measure up the two teams to try and learn what they are and will be this season.
Liverpool Performance
Liverpool won the title last season without too much fuss or a true team that chased them. That had the effect that their end of the season was many games without stakes and saw them play a bit hung over for the final matches of the season.
The start of this season we touched on briefly above and will get more detailed about below, but it hasn’t quieted any of the questions about them.
Even with both of those factors this team is damn good, here is what the metrics look for the last 19 Premier League matches played:
They were by far the best team in the Premier League and even with the pretty unprecedented for a title defender churn in the first XI they have started off that way this season as well (with markets ever so slightly moving to Arsenal after the first two but this match will have the potential to move things both ways).
So far this season they have played a schedule that is a bit harder than average but not overly skewed.
Their overall first ten matches will be the hardest part of their schedule this season from the starting expectations, that won’t be ideal for a team that is learning who they are and differs from last season where they had a soft start and used that to catapult themselves out front into a lead that the other teams couldn’t close down.
The worry would be that if they are able to stay in striking distance and can get their team settled, they could make a real run late into year. Arsenal getting a result here would be a big deal for the team’s chances of winning the title.
Liverpool Form
We don’t have enough full matches yet for the current season so I will include the end of last season, even if I do know that doesn’t paint a full picture of Liverpool with the number of exits and incomings plus that they had already wrapped up the title.
This gives me a chance to also use this new graphic that I have always had in my head but never got to work just right.
This looks at the running xG for Liverpool compared to their opposition. This is the same idea for using it as a single match but just extending it to as many matches as we want (for this I am picking 7 matches as my default, but it is flexible if I want to see more or less).
Over this stretch Liverpool have 3 wins, 2 draws, and 2 losses and have played just okay over this stretch. They won 11 points over these matches compared to 10.1 expected points and had just one real dominating outing where they comprehensively beat their opponents (Spurs at home).
They won the xG battle in 4 of the 5 matches over this span, losing 2 of the matches where they created the better share of chances overall.
One of the patterns over this run is that they have given up leads, with three times in these seven matches where they gave up a two-goal lead (two of them, both this season they recovered to win still) and another where they got a lead but failed to hold it blowing +1 advantages twice to lose 2-3.
This straddles two seasons and has all of the caveats so it’s tough to draw conclusions but it does contribute to the questions that I have about this Liverpool team and exactly just how good they are, between being truly elite and just very good.
Style Comparison
This is another graphic that I have taken the opportunity this offseason to expand and add a few more stats that help us to see how a team plays.
I have added a few new ones here with total attacking possessions per match, this is the total sequences for a team in a match and between Arsenal and Liverpool this really helps show the differences between teams with similar possession numbers with Liverpool matches devolving more often into back-and-forth affairs and fewer long slow spells of possession.
I also added in how many of the total passes are long in addition to long passing volume, teams that pass a lot can still have a fairly high total of long passes but seeing how often they do it is helpful as well. I have also added in looking at how dependent on crosses a team is for getting the ball close to goal as another data point to see how a team plays.
The last addition here is adding in where a team plays on average, looking at the share of their actions in the defensive, middle, and attacking thirds in a match.
Last season, Liverpool still played a transition style but it looked like a more constrained and a bit more conservative version compared to what they looked like under Jurgen Klopp. It is still early this season (and why I am not putting that graphic up yet, that will come after 7-8 played) but it does seem that the team has returned back towards a bit more helter skelter style.
Team Ranks
Liverpool were the strongest attacking team in the Premier League and ranked highly overall as well. The threat that they were second to none in was generating quick attacks and fast breaks, that will be one of the things that Arsenal will need to figure out how to slow down here if they want to win.
Defensively Liverpool were quite strong but not quite at the level of their attacking numbers.
They were still a team that pressed effectively and looked to induce teams to play in the back-and-forth style that they wanted and had the superior talent to take advantage of and did so to great effect.
Keys to the game
Taking inspiration from
and looking at what items are correlated with performances in points and xG difference, many of the things that you expect jump out here for Liverpool.
In attack if you let them get up the field and the pressure you apply doesn’t push down their ability to complete passes, you’re going to have a bad day. If you can keep them more in their own half and make them work harder to produce their shots you can have a chance.
From the opponent perspective if you can get Liverpool having to defend and make their press less effective that’s a key factor. The other key here is that if you can effectively attack at speed against their defense that is something that causes them troubles.
If I were looking at what Arsenal need to do in this match to tilt it in their favor, I would focus on these items:
MAKE BUILDUP HARD. This is a game where Arsenal’s pressing needs to be fully at the top of the game. Liverpool want to turn defense into attack quickly and that makes it tough to regain shape and slow them down and this will be where the first few seconds after losing the ball are key. Arsenal don’t always need to win the ball high here for this to be effective (that helps obviously) but if they can make them take the few more passes it makes the effectiveness of their quick attacks drop.
EXECUTE. This one is pretty obvious but at the highest level where teams are not separated by much, making fewer mistakes often is the factor that drives the margins. Arsenal under Arteta are just not often going to get the tactics wrong and being able to get the runs made right and found, the correct decision and weights on the passes, tracking runners off the ball will be the major factors here.
BULLY THEM. One of the things that I could see in the first two matches of the season is that Liverpool seemed to have some trouble handling teams that could out muscle them. This is a team that doesn’t have a lot of size in the team and can be a bit light weight. Using this to the advantage to make Liverpool’s execution harder will be a potential strength for Arsenal.
My model and the betting odds lean Liverpool here but it is a very close overall matchup. Given that Arsenal have gone 13 years without a League win on this ground it would be tough to feel like Arsenal should be expected to win here but this is very much one of the best opportunities to grab all three points that they have had in a long time.
When the schedule came out my mantra here for this match was this was a do not lose match and I have not changed that here. Liverpool failing to pick up all three points is big for the title race, and a draw for Liverpool is worse for them than it is for Arsenal. A win would be the perfect scenario and have a bit of that irrational confidence that this team might just be able to pull it off here.