Are things on the way up at Anfield?
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I’m not going to lie, I was really, really nervous about the game against Spurs. When the game was postponed I remember thinking “Phew. That will give us some time to get back to form”. In truth the postponement did far more damage than good. Now we would have to play then sans Gerrard, Torres and Yossi; our three star performers of last season who didn’t go to Real Madrid. The game was massively important, easily as much as the Old Trafford game last year. The big difference, then we fought for honours, now we fight for dignity. When the boys stepped out onto the pitch, my heart was in my mouth. This was nowhere near the team I had predicted. No N’Gog, Kuyt playing lone striker, Degen on the wing. I remember daring to think “this could get very ugly”.
But then something happened that immediately quelled my beating heart. Carra called all of the lads together and they had a team huddle. I saw Carra shouting to be heard over the roars of “You’ll Never Walk Alone”. Pepe was adding his bit, and the boys had a steel to their eyes that has been missing for months. Suddenly they were together again, and Anfield knew it. We then proceeded to put on a display that I have been longing for months. We passed with some sense of purpose. We created chances and had shots at goal. We dominated the midfield and held solid at the back. Liverpool was back!
Obviously this is only one game and we still have plenty more to come, plus we have had plenty of false dawns this season already (Man U the most obvious), but there was something different about this game to those ones. This wasn’t three points scraped, this was three points thoroughly earned, and well deserved. If we can put a few more performances like that together, then top four should be well within our grasp.
Now comes the question: Do we have the right to expect to be in the top four every season? One of the complaints often levelled at the Liverpool fan, is that of how we act like we deserve success. That we act like simply because we are Liverpool, every season is going to be the one when we win the premiership. What do we have that makes us think we are so gifted that we can win even without the best team (and let’s not kid ourselves, we haven’t had the best team for at least 15 years). The obvious answer is our history, but history doesn’t win you anything (just ask the Italian residents of mighty Rome about World War II if you don’t believe me).
So, in brief, do we truly deserve to be in the top four? Our points tally says no, but is it telling the whole story? I’ve done some research around the stats of this season, and have found something very interesting but it’s going to take some explaining, so please bear with me.
At the end of the season, every team will have played the other 19 teams both at home and away. Thus everyone will have played the same fixtures and will have an overall points tally indicative of their average performance over the season. At this stage this is not true. While we have played Tottenham both at home and away, 16 other teams have not done so. The only true way to compare the teams therefore, is to compare the results of similar fixtures. In other words, only the games that both we and Arsenal have played can be used to compare who has done better this season. Obviously this is not conclusive, but it will give us a better idea of how things are truly going.
In this exercise I will compare Liverpool’s results to those of the other top 4 teams, together with the three top 4 pretenders (Man City, Tottenham, and Aston Villa). Each team will be compared to Liverpool alone and the scores cannot be used to compare, say, Arsenal and Tottenham. Right, that’s enough talk. Let’s get to it:
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Liverpool vs. Arsenal (13 games)
Similar home games: (AV, Bir, Hul, Sto, Tot, Wig)
Similar away games: (Bol, Eve, Ful, Por, Sun, WH)
Played together at Liverpool
Liverpool: W7 D1 L5 P22
Arsenal: W11 D1 L1 P34
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Liverpool vs. Chelsea (12 games)
Similar home games: (Bur, Hul, MU, Tot, Wol)
Similar away games: (AV, Bol, Ful, Sto, Sun, WH)
Played together at Chelsea
Liverpool: W8 D1 L3 P25
Chelsea: W10 D1 L1 P31
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Liverpool vs. Manchester United (14 games)
Similar home games: (Ars, AV, Bir, Bur, MC, WH, Wol)
Similar away games: (Che, Ful, Por, Sto, Tot, WH)
Played together at Liverpool
Liverpool: W7 D1 L6 P22
Man United: W10 D1 L3 P31
————————————————————————-
Liverpool vs. Manchester City (12 games)
Similar home games: (Ars, Bur, Hul, Sto, Wol)
Similar away games: (AV, Bla, Bol, Eve, Por, Tot)
Played together at Liverpool
Liverpool: W7 D2 L3 P23
Man City: W5 D5 L3 P20
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Liverpool vs. Tottenham (18 games)
Similar home games: (Bir, Bur, Hul, MC, MU, Sto, Wig, Wol)
Similar away games: (AV, Bla, Bol, Che, EVE, Ful, Por, WH)
Played together at Liverpool and Tottenham
Liverpool: W11 D3 L4 P36
Tottenham: W8 D5 L5 P29
————————————————————————-
Liverpool vs. Aston Villa (11 games)
Similar home games: (Hul, MC, Sto, Tot, Wig)
Similar away games: (Bla, Eve, Sun, WH)
Played together at Liverpool and Aston Villa
Liverpool: W7 D2 L2 P23
Aston Villa: W4 D3 L3 P15
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Now to rate them. Note once again that these are comparisons to Liverpool alone, so any ranking will be how much better or worse they have done compare to us. This does not conclude who has done better between Chelsea and Man U or any other combination.
The Results
Arsenal……………………..+0.92 pts/game
Man United……………….+0.64 pts/game
Chelsea……………………+0.5 pts/game
Liverpool
Manchester City………..-0.23 pts/game
Tottenham………………..-0.39 pts/game
Aston Villa…………………-0.73 pts/game
So there we have it. It seems that we are still top four material when we compare fixtures directly. Does this mean that we will definitely get there? Of course not! No matter what we still need to get the results. The bad news is that Since we are behind in overall points, that means that the pretenders have already won some of the fixtures we haven’t played and conversely we have already lost some of the ones they haven’t played.
In the end everyone ends up where they deserve to be, but during the season itself this is not always true. My message basically is that sometimes things aren’t as bad as they seem. Keep the faith, my fellow fans.
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