By Chris Rowland. So how many points should we have got this season? If results had matched performances and we got what we deserved from each game, I mean. Forgetting black swans and outliers, what difference would it have made? This post is for Subscribers only.
It’s not hard to see why Liverpool dropped so many points, despite generally playing well. The Reds had the worst shot-conversion accuracy in the entire Premier League. And when they did hit the target, mediocre visiting goalkeepers turned into Peter Schmeichel, getting fingertips to unreachable shots.
Pre-match stats Swansea have failed to score in their last five games in all competitions against Liverpool. Swansea have won just one of their last eight Premier League games. Liverpool have failed to score on the final day in the past two seasons. But the Reds have lost on the final day only once in [...]
Pre-match stats This is the 32nd meeting between Liverpool and Chelsea in the past eight seasons, more than any other fixture in any eight year period in English football history. Liverpool have won five of the last seven Premier League meetings between the teams, and the last three in a row. The Reds have scored [...]
Familiarity breeds contempt, and since 2004, Liverpool seem to have played Chelsea four or five times a season. The epic – if not exactly attractive – Champions League games have given way to equally combative domestic cup encounters. Before, particularly between 2004 and 2007, it seemed that Chelsea, with all their expensive players, would win [...]
Pre-match stats On all three occasions Liverpool had beatenEverton in an FA Cup semi-final before this season, the Reds went on to lose the final. Only three teams have previously won the League Cup and FA Cup in the same season:Arsenal in 92/93, Liverpool in 00/01 and Chelsea in 06/07. Liverpool could become the first team to [...]
Starting XIs and overall shapes In the light of the forthcoming FA Cup Final, not unexpectedly Dalglish made wholesale changes to his starting team. There were nine new faces following the previous league match, with only Shelvey and Henderson keeping their places. But the formation was the same – once again, as so often this [...]
Pre-match stats These two sides mustered 16 shots on target between them in the reverse fixture which ended as a 1-1 draw. Only Wolves (6) have picked up fewer points than Liverpool (12) in 2012. Liverpool have only won three of their last 15 Premier League matches, losing nine in that run. Norwich have won [...]
Pre-match stats Liverpool have won all five previous home games against West Brom in the Premier League without conceding a single goal. Going back further, the Baggies haven’t won any of their last 21 trips to Anfield (since 1967) in the top-flight (D4, L17). Overall, the Baggies have lost 10 of their 11 PL clashes [...]
Hardly a Match of the Day or a 5Live ‘Kicking Off’ goes by without someone mentioning ‘momentum’ or ‘success breeding success’ or something like it. The same can be said for Tomkins Times discussions – in dark despair after a long run of defeats; in desperate hope following a big win following a disappointing sequence (and there have been many). Everyone believes in momentum.
