The insane xG stat from Liverpool’s 85 failed attempts on goal | OneFootball

Since December 27, when we found the back of the net early against West Brom, Liverpool have played nearly five entire Premier League matches without scoring a goal.

We’ve had nearly all the ball in all of these games, but have lost two of them and drawn three.

It’s been horrible on the eye – watching a laboured, nervous offence against a painfully low-block on every occasion.

Liverpool have had 85 attempts on goal without scoring, and remarkably, xG says we should have bagged 8 (7.76) in that time.

You can fairly say that if we’d performed at our xG level we’d have won all five matches.

xG is an algorithm which counts the number of expected goals you’ll see when a player is shooting from a certain position and what defenders are around him, etc, based on hundreds of thousands previous football matches.

In many ways, this explains that our issue is not so much the buildup, the system or anything tactical – but the decision making and the finishing in the penalty box – which has been genuinely abysmal.

When Roberto Firmino sliced another side-foot wide from 9 yards, we knew it wasn’t going to be our night.