In Michael Cox (a.k.a. Zonal Marking)’s preview of France’s chances at the forthcoming World Cup, he noted the following about Liverpool’s £17m French centre-back.
Mamadou Sakho is good in the air and quick across the floor but poor in possession.
The end of that description didn’t sit quite right with me, so I took a quick look at the stats.
As Liverpool continue to struggle to make a push towards the top four, it’s very tempting to blame things that are beyond their control. The Reds have only been awarded one penalty in twenty-two league games to date, when they have averaged one every 6.9 league games in the previous ten seasons, and the Debatable Decisions website suggests that Liverpool have lost eleven points through incorrect refereeing calls and should at present be joint third in the Premier League table.
But some of the damage has unfortunately been self-inflicted. I’m referring to defensive errors, and compared to both the Reds’ own form in previous seasons, and the worst defences in the Premier League in recent years, the current Liverpool team is performing exceptionally badly. Continue reading
Following the latest international break, Liverpool resume Premier League action with a match against newly-promoted Reading at home tomorrow, and the Reds really need a win.
A painful statistic doing the rounds is that both Arsenal and Liverpool have won two league games at Anfield in 2012, and Brendan Rodgers needs the Reds to move onto three home victories sooner rather than later if the pressure on him is not going to start becoming unbearable.
However, using EPLIndex’s excellent ‘Top Stats’ function, I have looked at how certain members of the Liverpool squad are performing, and whilst the team as a whole may not have hit the heights as yet under Rodgers, the stats suggest that a number of players are in fact doing really well individually.
A first for Basstunedtored – a guest column! Andrew Fanko (who you can follow on Twitter here) takes a look at the defensive records of Liverpool’s current back-four combinations, and wonders if a previously untried pairing should get a run out…
Liverpool have already conceded 20 goals in their 13 competitive games so far this season, which is an average of 1.54 per game. You have to go back to the dark days of Graeme Souness and the 1992/93 season to find such a porous start to a campaign. We shipped 27 goals in the first 13 games of that season, including four at home to Chesterfield!
In the 19 interim seasons, the Reds have conceded an average of 11.6 goals in their first 13 games, which in itself is a per-game average of just 0.89 goals. So we’re conceding 0.65 more goals per game than we’ve been used to over the last two decades.
Bass Tuned To Red 