Long live the Rafa-lution
I love them (the Beatles came from Liverpool), I love them not (so did Militant). I love them (they are admirably sporting and passionate), I love them not (the fans are irritatingly certain that they power their team). I love them (what a club, what a history), I love them not (when I go to watch them play my side, I usually feel that I should take a pillow). I am, in other words, ambivalent about Liverpool.
But about Rafael BenÍtez? About Rafa, I am off the fence. Dr Henry Stott and Dr Ian Graham got up from their sofas after the FA Cup fiasco against Barnsley and started crunching the numbers. Somehow they knew that it would be necessary. And the next day, the papers were, indeed, duly full of stories about the future of Liverpool’s manager. It is worth, therefore, starting with this.
There was a 91 per cent chance of Liverpool defeating Barnsley at home. That they lost did not alter their 50 per cent chance of beating Inter Milan in the Champions League on Tuesday, a game they proceeded to win. You simply cannot make judgments based on one result, or even a small clutch of results. You have to take a longer view.
What happens when you do? Using a weighted measure of goals and shots on goal (the weighting is the one we use to beat the bookies season after season), we can compare Liverpool’s attacking and defensive strength with the best in the Barclays Premier League.
This allows us to see whether they are getting closer or farther away from the top side and whether there has been a dip this season. The results are clear. In May 2005, Liverpool’s attack was 71 per cent as strong as Manchester United, now it is 82 per cent. And over the same period their defence has improved from 79 per cent of Chelsea to 89 per cent. This season? Defence shot up, then fell back, but is still higher than it was at the beginning (83 per cent of Chelsea). Attack has remained pretty constant. The graphic is another way of looking at things. Liverpool’s ranking has been remarkably constant over three seasons. So what, if anything, is going wrong this season? (And they have gone wrong. The chance of a top-four finish is now only 58 per cent).
Three things come out of the data. The first is that Liverpool are scoring a smaller proportion of their shots on target than they were. The second is that they are letting in a larger proportion. And the final point is that they are accumulating disappointingly few points for the goals they do score. Here’s a remarkable set of statistics.
This season Liverpool have scored two more goals than Chelsea and conceded the same number. Yet Chelsea have 11 more points. If all this stuff sounds sort of familiar to you, that’s because it is broadly what happened to Arsenal last season. They had some bad luck and this year they are having good luck. That’s just the way it goes.
There are two more points worth touching on briefly. It may be that in the mix of bad luck, José Manuel Reina has added some pretty poor play. He is having a very bad season, whereas last year he was one of Liverpool’s best players. This year the star is Steven Gerrard - a player the Fink Tank hasn’t always raved about.
One thing I do want you to forget about is rotation. Our new rotation measure (of which more soon) does not show BenÍtez as the biggest rotator.
Rafa must stay.
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