You don’t need me to write an article to know that February was another fairly quiet month on the goal scoring front for Liverpool. The Reds only netted six times in 540 minutes, and that included a penalty and an own goal, despite accumulating 11.3 expected goals (per FiveThirtyEight).

As the final goal of the month carried no xG weight – with Sheffield United’s Kean Bryan deflecting Roberto Firmino’s shot into the net – Liverpool wasted 56 per cent of their expected goals last month. Even scoring to par, never mind having a hot streak, would’ve almost certainly led to more than two positive results from the six matches.

And the post-shot xG from Statsbomb (via FBRef) still came to 9.8; credit the goalkeepers or admonish the finishers as you prefer, the Reds could easily have enjoyed a much better February.

But rather than simply feeling sorry for ourselves, there were still some interesting aspects to the goals which were scored, so let’s take a look at their DNA.

Look alert, stay alive

Here’s a shot map of the blocked efforts by Trent Alexander-Arnold in the league this season. What do you think the pair in the yellow circle have in common?

The obvious response would be that they were poor choices to shoot, but that doesn’t necessarily separate them from the other purple dots on the image. The reason that those two efforts are of particular interest to us here is that they both led to goals in February.

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