Liverpool FC: 2016/17 Pre-Season Stats Review

As pre-season campaigns are usually hard to get data for, especially once they are over, I’ve been compiling stats for Liverpool’s 2016/17 preparations as they have gone along. Firstly, a look at minutes and games played, plus goals and assists.

Kevin Stewart and Roberto Firmino were the only two of the thirty-nine players in total who appeared to feature in every single match, though as you can see Dejan Lovren played the most minutes overall. In terms of who may feature in the opening matches of the season proper, I thought it’d be interesting to see which players have featured most since those that were at Euro 2016 returned and the club went on tour in America.

It wouldn’t be a surprise to see the XI for the match at Arsenal taken from the top twelve on this table; maybe Mignolet, Clyne, Lovren, Klavan, Moreno, Henderson, Wijnaldum, Lallana, Coutinho, Mané, and Firmino, for instance. I’ve also been compiling the chance creation combination and shot statistics too:

Lazar Markovic divides opinion like few other current Liverpool players, and whilst I personally haven’t seen anywhere near enough of pre-season to assess his performance properly, he has at least created the most chances. That said, much like the two players directly below him in the chances created table (Brannagan and Kent), the Serbian filled his boots primarily against the lower league opposition the Reds faced early on.

Danny Ings has the most shots, and did score two, but Firmino and Grujic both bagged three goals. It would be foolish to read anything much into the small samples and diverse mixture of opposition standard you face in pre-season, but it’s disappointing that Coutinho didn’t get on the score sheet as he had more shots than six players who did find the back of the net.

These are just a few simple observations on the above, please feel free to leave a comment if anything catches your eye.