Liverpool's form... what's the deal?

Liverpool’s form is the trending topic right now and everybody has an opinion… including little old me.

Okay, what went wrong for Liverpool in this particular game at Brentford? The stats kinda say they dominated the time on the ball. Liverpool had:

But Brentford had more than 3 times the interceptions and a better xG. The xG was actually a pretty good indicator because if you round the numbers to their nearest whole number it says the score should have been… guess what… 3-2 to Brentford. So Brentford shaded Liverpool on the chances created. And that was enough for the 3 points

To quantify the result a bit more, 8 of the 14 Interceptions that Brentford made came from the backs Ajer, van den Berg, Collins and Kayode. This suggests the quality of Liverpool’s build up play is not what it could be. And Liverpool’s Shots on Target was only 28% of all shots whereas Brentford was 44%.

If Liverpool’s build up play and shot accuracy had been better the result might have been 4-3 to Liverpool? But hey, it wasn’t.

Lets compare to last season’s game. The result was Brentford 0 Liverpool 2

In the 2024-2025 season Liverpool still had:

But… here are the key takeaways comparing last season to this for this game

Rounding the xG would suggest the score should have been maybe 3-1 to Liverpool.

Although this is only looking at one game I think they do and I think it supports what the naked eye can see when I watched this game. Liverpool are now fully in the Arne Slot way of playing. Last season was a Klopp/Slot hybrid Liverpool and even then probably more Klopp than Slot even though Klopp had caught his last taxi out of Anfield at the end of the 2023-2024 eason. Liverpool are not as direct anymore. There is more keep-ball.

Teams now have better ideas how to combat this keep-ball style that was perpetuated by Pep’s Man City over the last 6 or 7 years. Liverpool have not improved on last season, they have regressed despite their £400+ spend on new players.

In this game last season Liverpool had 68 Shot Creating Actions (SCA). This season they had less than half that! And the top 6 Liverpool protaganists of thta SCA stat were:

I’m not taking anything away from Brentford’s performance. They won and were convincing. You could’t say they were lucky, they took their chances. They were (guess what) more direct… which used to be Liverpools trait.

Liverpool have definately changed the way they play. They are missing Alexander-Arnold and Robertson is not a regular starter, but Mac Allister, Gakpo, Salah and Szoboszlai’s SCA numbers are all down.

Conversley the number of attempted passes are up 18% on last season. The top 6 Liverpool players for both seasons being:

The Keeper Mamardashvili was the 5th highest passer in this season’s game. That’s got to say something… right?

Too much Tiky-Taky football from Slot. Bring back the directness.

All stats for this analysis are provided by FBref