Second Half Slump? Controlling The Result

Liverpool returned to the top of the Premier League with a 3-1 win over Crystal Palace at Anfield. The problems that have dogged the Reds this season were evident though, as they delivered a below par performance in the second half of the match as usual.

In their seven league matches in 2013/14, Liverpool have yet to trail at the half time break, leading in six and drawing the other. In view of this, it’s not surprising that they’ve been on the back foot in the second period as they have had something to protect rather than a game to chase.

Viewed through this reality, I’m going to show that they’ve had better control of their second halves than you might think.

Reds Bounce Back

What do these ten league results from Brendan Rodgers’ tenure have in common?

Graduating With Honours

This first appeared on The Tomkins Times on 4th July 2013.

Liverpool academy director Frank McParland and his team can be mightily pleased with their achievements in 2012/13. This season was a fantastic year for Liverpool’s academy, as several of its graduates made a real impression upon Brendan Rodgers’ first team.

Seven young Reds (Morgan, Suso, Wisdom, Yesil, Sinclair, Coady and Ibe) made their senior debuts for the club, and Raheem Sterling made his first start after three substitute appearances at the tail end of 2011/12, meaning that the Academy provided more new players for the first team than in any previous season in the Premier League era.

Crosses, Counter Attacks, and Confirmation Bias

Whilst listening to this week’s The Anfield Wrap podcast (which I thoroughly recommend, and you can download here), I found myself nodding along with their discussion regarding Liverpool’s continual failure to prevent crosses. Mike Girling, one of the podcast’s regulars, noted:

“It’s an obvious tactic that opposing teams are taking with us (Liverpool) now, is to play the ball out wide early as our full backs don’t press, man to man, against a wide player. I’ve never known a team as easy to cross against as us. We never seem to stop the cross coming in”.

I was in complete agreement with him. Until I looked up the figures, that is; I only realised today that WhoScored have the figures for how many and what kind of pass teams face from their opponents, so I have compiled the figures for every team in the Premier League.

The 39 Steps

By beating Swansea City 5-0 at Anfield in their last match, Liverpool moved on to thirty-nine points.

An interesting quirk of fate is that this is the third season in a row (all of which have started with a different manager, don’t forget) that the Reds have had this many points after twenty-seven games. I’ve plotted a graph to show how the points-per-game (ppg) has reached 1.44 at this point each season.

Why Liverpool Won’t Finish Fourth

Having come through two very tough away games relatively unscathed (albeit having drawn both despite leading both), attention turns to Liverpool’s relatively easy run-in, as fans start to dream of a late charge for fourth place and Champions League football in 2013/14.

Although the Reds have picked up form-wise of late, they still have an Achilles heel which will, in my view, prevent them from kicking on too much further up the table.

Individuals Are Performing, Now For The Team

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.