Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool are undoubtedly great at game management this season. One statistic sums it up, though.
Whoscored revealed an interesting statistic on Monday. They say that only three teams in the Premier League have had fewer shots in the last fifteen minutes of games than Liverpool.
Burnley, Newcastle United and Arsenal have fewer attempts at the end of games. That’s it. Three teams, none of whom are having great seasons going forward.
In fact, if you add Arsenal and Burnley’s goals together, only then do you get Liverpool’s total. And unquestionably, they’re having different seasons to the Reds.
So why have the latter joined these three on this list? The answer is that Liverpool have terrific game management.
Liverpool aren’t often chasing goals towards the end of games, of course. They’re usually seeing out a lead or just closing the game out with the points intact.
And in those instances, Klopp’s team are happy to play things slowly and hold back. No need to waste energy, of course.
But sometimes they are chasing a goal or two. And looking at this statistic, you’d gather that Liverpool are brilliant at choosing the quality of shots over quantity.
No one needs any help identifying that Liverpool are a good side. But it’s these things that show the remarkable turnaround under Klopp.
The Liverpool of even his early reign certainly didn’t have the composure or knowhow to see games out or chase them in a composed manner. Things were far more scattergun than that.
But this Liverpool team has become a true winning machine, the likes of which we haven’t seen before.
And stats like this, where they truly stand out, give us an idea of how that’s happened.
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