Last weekend brought plenty of disappointment to plenty of sides. But for three clubs in particular, their losses signify more worrying trends. Hull City may be up against Burnley's minnows this weekend, but that doesn't mean their luck won't run out. Meanwhile, Liverpool are taking on league leaders Chelsea, while Borussia Dortmund host Borussia Mönchengladbach -- will either underdog be able to solve the problems evident in their play?
Stats show Liverpool’s attack is way too slow
Plus two other clubs that our stats suggest are in some trouble.
Shaun Botterill
Borussia Dortmund's vaunted press might be a problem
In the headline match of the weekend, defending Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich took on struggling rivals Borussia Dortmund. Bayern won, but not without controversy, with a soft penalty call giving the Bavarians the game-deciding goal late on. But on the balance of chances, it is hard to say that Dortmund played toe-to-toe with Pep Guardiola's side. Although Dortmund went ahead early with a Marco Reus goal after one of their traditional aggressive vertical attacks, BVB spent most of the match beating back dangerous Bayern moves and quality chances.
The expected goals map for the match explains much of the problem. Bayern attempted 24 shots, 12 from the danger zone, while Dortmund had only 10 attempts, three from the danger zone. A couple of spectacular saves by Roman Weidenfeller and some dubious finishing from Bayern kept Dortmund in the match, but it was always going to be difficult to hold the line.
BVB's famed press is what tripped them up defensively. While Dortmund were able to win the ball back in some dangerous areas, they were also caught out many times when Bayern broke through the first pressing line. In these moments, Dortmund defenders would be stuck one-on-one against skilled technicians like Arjen Robben or Mario Götze. On the day, Bayern attempted 30 take-ons and succeeded with 17. In their previous matches, BVB had been facing about 16 take-ons per match, of which they had lost an average of nine. So while Dortmund's pressing style typically gives other teams the opportunity to try to dribble a defender, they gave up twice as many of these chances to Bayern as they did against a typical Bundesliga opponent.
Further, and perhaps more worrying for Jürgen Klopp, a good number of these one-on-one plays left a center back isolated against an attacker. Dortmund’s central defenders had typically only faced a couple of opposition dribble attempts per match, but against the Bavarians they faced eight. Five of those were won by the Bayern attacker. When a center back is beaten, there is usually much less defensive support available behind him than in a typical take-on. Dribbling them typically leads to shots about 50 percent more often than dribbles of other players.
Further, twice one of Dortmund’s CBs was beaten near the center circle. These plays suggest breakdowns in Dortmund’s structure where a center back finds himself defending one-on-one far too high up the pitch. Klopp’s press ended up leaving far too many easy attacking lanes for Bayern, and he will need to modulate their style if Dortmund is to recover in the Bundesliga.
Liverpool need to get faster
While Dortmund deal with a crisis of defending, Liverpool have clear problems in their attack. The Reds were not only beaten but totally contained by a Newcastle defense that had previously just aspired to competence. Liverpool attempted only five shots on the match for an expected goals total of about 0.3. Newcastle's clean sheet was hardly surprising in this context.
Liverpool are experiencing a multitude of problems, but one of the most glaring is the lack of transition opportunities in attack. Last season Liverpool regularly broke open opposition defenses for quick strikes. They had 91 shots following attacks at speed of five yards per second or more, the most in the English Premier League. This year Brendan Rodgers' side has created only 11 shots at pace.
Shots off attacks of five yd/s or more tend to be scored at rates about 50 percent higher than those taken after a slow build-up. So Liverpool is not merely playing less exciting, open football, but also playing less dangerous attacking football. In their last two matches, the Reds have not created a single shot with a fast build-up, and only two with build-up speed of over three yards per second. Rodgers will need to figure out how his club can speed up their play if he means to get this attack running again.
Hull City is headed for a fall
Two weeks ago, Liverpool's attacking struggles played straight into Hull City's hands, enabling Steve Bruce's side came away with a hard-fought point at Anfield. But a single point rarely makes a huge difference, and this weekend their 0-1 home defeat to Southampton dropped Hull to 14th in the English Premier League table. The Tigers have allowed only one goal more than they have scored, however, which could suggest that better times are ahead. But a further look into the numbers shows that Hull have scored their 13 goals on the back of a hot run of finishing form. And hot streaks almost always have to end sometime.
Hull’s goal scoring has been driven by three men: Nikica Jelavic, Mohamed Diamé and Abel Hernández. Jelavic started the season well, with four goals in about 650 minutes, before being sidelined with a sprained knee. Midfielder Diamé (four goals) and backup striker Hernandez (two) have picked up the slack since the Croatian’s injury. None of these players have terribly impressive shot statistics, but they have all been scoring a massive percentage of their shots attempted.
Top strikers -- the sort of players who consistently score goals at the rates these three have managed early in the season-- typically attempt more than three shots per 90 minutes.
When looking at expected goals, Hull's leaders appear even less impressive. Based on shots attempted, xG estimates that Hernández, Diamé and Jelavic should have scored 3-4 goals, not 10. While it is possible for quality strikers to consistently outperform expected goals, even Lionel Messi tends to score no more than 50 percent more goals than xG projects. Certainly these guys won't maintain conversion rates around three times their collective xG.
Let's compare all shot attempts by Hull's leading scorers against the shot attempts by Manchester City forwards Sergio Agüero, Edin Dzeko and Stevan Jovetic. While the City forwards are also outperforming xG, it is by a more reasonable 30 percent or so. In the graphs below, the black boxes mark goals scored, while all the other boxes are shots not converted.
It simply takes a bunch of good chances to create a goal, even when you have some of the world’s most expensive strikers taking those shots. Finishing is hard. When a group of players on Hull City are making it look easy, odds are very good that this is an unsustainable hot streak.
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