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Liverpool’s scoring record at Anfield has been poor but those who blame bad luck and Andy Carroll may be missing the point

Liverpool sit a reasonably contented sixth in the table. They have conceded fewer goals than anybody else in the Premier League and, although a gap of 11 points to the leaders is probably too much to make up, there is no reason why they shouldn’t mount a strong challenge to qualify for the Champions League. The one niggling doubt, and the one reason that they’re not in with a chance of winning the title, is their repeated failure to kill sides off at home.

Although they ended up winning relatively comfortably against Newcastle on Friday, that was only their fourth win in 10 home games this season. A record of 14 goals from 10 matches at Anfield tells the same story as the memory of countless headers flashing just wide and opposing goalkeepers making save after save. Andy Carroll, mocked as he is, seems to have been particularly unfortunate in that regard, being denied late winners by barely credible saves from Manchester City’s Joe Hart and Blackburn’s Mark Bunn.

Luck, the unspoken deity that haunts football more than anyone likes to admit, has played its part, and it may be that the second half of the season will follow the model of the Newcastle game rather than the 1-1 draw with Blackburn as success breeds confidence. Much of success in sport, though, is about manipulating percentages, and it’s perhaps there that Liverpool bear a level of responsibility for their failing.

The statistics are remarkable. Opta figures show that in nine home matches after Kenny Dalglish took charge last season, Liverpool scored 20 goals, compared with 14 in 10 home games this season: 2.22 goals per game compared to 1.4. Yet last season in games under Dalglish, Liverpool averaged 12.89 shots per game, compared with 15.4 this (in 2009-10 Liverpool had 14.89 shots per game at home, and the season before that 17.79).

Now, while it’s clear that not all shots are equal – an open goal from two yards yields a far higher likelihood of a goal being scored than an overhead kick from 30 yards – there is obviously a high correlation between shots and goals. In an interview in The Blizzard the Norway manager Egil Olsen notes that three-quarters of games are won by the side who had more shots and explains that he abandoned his attempts to quantify how good a chance was because it yielded almost identical results.

Liverpool this season score a goal with every 11 shots they have at home. Last season they scored every 5.81 shots. In 2009-10 they scored every 6.59 shots and in 2008-09 every 8.24 (at least since statistics began to be recorded, a basic rule of thumb has remained that every nine shots will yield one goal). Away from home this season, the figure is even worse, a goal coming every 11.51 shots. It would be easy to blame that on Carroll’s profligacy, but he’s not the only one at fault. In terms of shooting accuracy, there’s not a great deal to chose between Liverpool’s four strikers. Craig Bellamy has got five of 11 shots on target, Carroll 14 of 34, Dirk Kuyt seven of 17 and Luis Suárez 28 of 69. The big difference is in chance conversion – how many of those shots go in. Bellamy has scored 36.4% of his chances (from an admittedly small sample size), Suárez 7.2%, Carroll 5.9% and Kuyt none.

Is there a reason for the comparative lack of effectiveness beyond simple profligacy or lack of confidence? Are, in other words, Liverpool creating chances that are difficult to take? The signings of Stewart Downing, Jordan Henderson and Charlie Adam were apparently motivated by the fact that all three were among the top eight chance-creators in the Premier League last season (Blackpool, Aston Villa and Sunderland were eighth, 13th and 17th in the scoring charts last season; it may be that the sort of chance Adam, Downing and Henderson create is not the most efficient sort of chance, precise as Henderson’s ball to Steven Gerrard for the third goal on Friday was).

At home this season, Liverpool have played 481.8 passes per game, completing 80.34% of them. It’s been suggested that they’ve become more direct, which would logically be reflected in fewer passes and a lower pass completion rate, but in 2009-10 at home they were averaging 492 passes per game at 80.05% completion, and in 2008-09 514.2 at 81.65%. In so far as passing stats reveal style, little seems to have changed since Rafael Benítez’s time. There is a danger that pass-completion stats can give a misleading impression if a side passes the ball among its back four before launching long balls, but pass completion in the opponent’s half has barely changed either: 73.10% this season, 72.61% in 2009-10 and 73.82% in 2008-09.

Last season under Dalglish at home, though, Liverpool played only 445 passes per game, with a success rate of 78.55%, and 70.81% in the opponent’s half. Those figures, taken with the stats on crossing, do seem to reveal a trend. In 2008-09 Liverpool averaged 33.16 crosses per home game. In 2009-10, 30.58. This season, the figure is 33.7. Last season under Dalglish, though, Liverpool hit just 23.33 crosses per game. Cross completion this season has been markedly better this season: 24.03% at home as opposed to 15.38 under Dalglish last season and 20.27% and 19.63% in the last two seasons under Benítez.

So Liverpool were almost twice as efficient in front of goal last season when they played fewer crosses and were more direct. That may change if Carroll’s efforts stopped hitting the woodwork or the outstretched fingertips of assorted goalkeepers, but Liverpool seem to have run into the theory postulated by Herbert Chapman in the 1920s. Rapid forward passes, he said, were “more deadly, if less spectacular” than the “senseless policy of running along the lines and centring just in front of the goalmouth, where the odds are nine to one on the defenders”.

It’s a fine balance, of course: create as many chances as possible, or create fewer chances that are easier to take? After 10 games, simple misfortune could still be playing its part, but it may be that Liverpool need to recalibrate a touch from the former to the latter.

LiverpoolFootball tacticsPremier League 2011-12Premier LeagueJonathan Wilsonguardian.co.uk

Today’s piffle is checking its own pulse

According to the Daily Mail Pepe Reina has “dropped a shock hint” – perhaps even a shock hint punted gently in his direction during a notably tense Merseyside derby – that he may be leaving Liverpool in the summer. Asked how long he intended to stay at Anfield, Reina replied “at least until the end of the season”, despite the fact he’s on a six-year contract. He also said he wouldn’t go back to Spain. Arsène Wenger is said to be “on red alert”, a condition he presumably conveys by frowning wearily in a long blue padded overcoat and occasionally stroking his chin.

Also in The Mail Blackburn, Liverpool and Tottenham are “monitoring” Stuttgart’s Russian international striker Pavel Pogrebnyak, who is 6ft 2in and has scored five goals in seven games, which is apparently good enough these days.

Arsenal are going to give a trial to the 16-year-old Israeli midfielder Omri Altman, described as “the new Yossi Benayoun”. Altman plays for Maccabi Tel Aviv and has ambitions to be quite good at West Ham for a year or so, spend five years variously injured or on the bench at assorted bigger clubs and grow a slightly lank floppy fringe. Newcastle and Liverpool are also interested.

Saint-Etienne have told Liverpool that their attacking midfielder Dimitri Payet isn’t for sale. Payet, if he were for sale, would cost £7m. And Manchester United have signed the Norway Under-15 international midfielder Mats Moller Daehli, who will now go on to become one of those spiky-haired academy types who turn up in the Carling Cup a few times, go on loan to Burnley, contract a mystery virus, are pictured standing next to Rio Ferdinand in ripped jeans at some godawful city centre Christmas party and then end up occasionally playing for Sunderland.

The Daily Mirror reports the news that Ashley Cole has said he “considered leaving Chelsea” over the summer. “There was a time in my head where I thought I needed to leave England,” Cole said yesterday, raising the notion of a separate and entirely localised time zone within his own head, a kind of Ashley Cole-centred universe that The Mill detects – after extensive gibbering in front of a blackboard in the style employed in American films starring Russell Crowe or some similar great reeking slab of cured ham to denote eccentric genius – indicates either (a) the existence of parallel universes accessed through the use of a “flux capacitor”; or (b) a case of terminal egomania. The Mill isn’t sure which.

Michael Ballack has suggested that Bastian Schweinsteiger should move to Manchester United or Real Madrid in the summer. “He has presence, authority, personality, performance and goals – he has everything,” Ballack sighed, standing alone in the desert on his vast and trunkless legs of stone and watching a 2002 DVD of Michael Ballack: third best player in the world. “Look on my works ye mighty and despair!” he added, inside his head.

Fulham want to sign Luke Young again, perhaps for £2m. Steve Bruce thinks Harry Redknapp will be the next England manager. And Birmingham are still down on their hands and knees clicking their fingers, talking in a high-pitched voice and periodically trying to grab a spitting, clawing Sebastian Larsson roughly round the neck in order to march him inside and make him sign a new contract. Blackburn Rovers are also keen.

Swansea midfielder Mark Gower has signed a new one-year contract. And Edgar Davids has finally taken off his sunglasses and had a really good look at West Norwood and the surrounding areas. “I have decided that my journey as a player at Crystal Palace has come to an end,” he announced yesterday.

Joey Barton reckons Fabio Capello must pick “Wildman Andy Carroll”. “Hopefully they will stop worrying about the Goody Two Shoes image which the sponsors want for England,” baddy two shoes Barton sighed, bundling a whole raft of issues including assault, drunkenness, more assault and other Things That Are Bad (but the mention of which might give the Mill’s top legal team heebie-jeebies) together under the banner of things that boring people avoid doing simply to suck up to sponsors – rather than to avoid breaking the law or ruining other people’s lives or due to some basic sense of right and wrong.

Norwegian goal-giant John Carew will be sold in January after calling Aston Villa manager Gerard Houllier “stupid” for not picking Norwegian goal giant John Carew more often. Houllier has described Carew in return as “paranoid”, a condition of extreme anxiety that often leaves sufferers with wild, googly, unblinking eyes that constantly rotate in their sockets.

LiverpoolStuttgartBarney Ronayguardian.co.uk

Liverpool have taken the first step out of the darkness by appointing a wise head with an eye for undiscovered talent

A legacy of the Bill Shankly era is that a Liverpool manager is expected to double up as priest, community leader and father figure at an institution that retained its family feel until two American speculators took it for a ride. The bonds are still there, under crushing corporate debt, but Roy Hodgson ought to be spared the cult of the leader.

The Kop could grumble at Hodgson’s arrival on Merseyside only if they think Liverpool needed a Hollywood gesture to end a 20-year wait for their 19th league title and restore them to the Champions League. What they need is 34 years of experience at club and international level and a restoration of the side’s forthright spirit. By the end of the Rafael Benítez reign one of the game’s great clubs had adopted a kind of mechanical pragmatism designed to destroy the opposition’s plans rather than impose their own.

Anfield’s regulars were suffering but were too loyal to complain. They filed out through the Shankly Gates bored. It was inimical to Liverpool’s followers to see their heroes win games by calculation alone. They revered Benítez for the 2005 Champions League win in Istanbul but could recognise the creeping joylessness of his football and his apparent inability to derive any pleasure from a goal.

Assuming the deal goes through, Hodgson’s Liverpool will get back on the front foot. They will assert their pedigree. Nullifying the opposition will not be their religion. This is the first step out of the darkness for a side who finished seventh in the Premier League and now face a second Europa League campaign. Some will shout that keeping Steven Gerrard, Fernando Torres, Javier Mascherano and Pepe Reina is the real first step to a renaissance and they would be right, except that those stars may be persuaded to stay only if they think Liverpool will recover their old identity and stop playing chess.

High on Hodgson’s to-do list will be a purge of all the obscure shadow men brought in by Benítez during a carnival of talent speculation. Clearing out the no-names and nearly men is a vital task which Hodgson has performed already at Fulham. This will lighten the wage bill, provide money for acquisitions and offer chinks of light to a marginalised academy, the finishing school for Michael Owen, Robbie Fowler, Steve McManaman, Jamie Carragher and Gerrard.

A widely expressed doubt is that Hodgson’s main skill is reviving the careers of discards and journeymen rather than dealing with household names, which would be news to Internazionale, who hired him to coach a team sporting Roberto Carlos and Paul Ince.

At Fulham he turned capable players into good ones by vigorous pattern-of-play work on the training ground. “Width in attack, depth in defence” was one of the first lessons he was taught. Liverpool will advance with pace and ingenuity but defend resolutely. His Fulham back five were a marvel of consistency achieved through familiarity. Mark Schwarzer, John Pantsil (a figure of fun at West Ham, but now a World Cup quarter-finalist with Ghana), Aaron Hughes, Brede Hangeland and Paul Konchesky were serial over-achievers. Hangeland’s arrival from Norway displayed Hodgson’s eye for an undiscovered talent: a virtue to be appreciated at a club £350m in debt.

So Liverpool have taken the sensible course of not chasing Marcello Lippi or Frank Rijkaard but hiring a sage who understands every nuance of the English game and will perform expert surgery on a bloated squad. Nor was a punt on a young manager advisable at this point. “There’s no question in my mind that an experienced manager who retains the passion and enthusiasm of his youth is going to be arguably a better manager than the energetic youthful one who doesn’t have the experience,” Hodgson said before Fulham’s Europa League final.

From boardroom chaos, miraculously, comes an appointment straight out of the old Liverpool school of wisdom.

Roy HodgsonLiverpoolPaul Haywardguardian.co.uk