Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool had scored seven goals in a Premier League game. They had conceded seven in one, too, a night at Villa Park that had the historians scanning back to 1963 to find a time a Liverpool team had been breached so often. What they had never done – in part because no one else had achieved it in a top-flight English game – was to amass an expected goals ratio of 7.27. Which, as such records date back to 2010-11, means the most in around 5,000 matches.
“Champions of xG” – you’ll never sing that. Perhaps. There are more important markers. As Liverpool went three points clear at the top of the table, they moved past Manchester City in the xG charts too. Yet the statistic that mattered most at Anfield was 4-2, not 7.27. There was nevertheless something blisteringly brilliant: not about the number in itself, but the manner of the performance that created it. Newcastle United finished ahead of Liverpool last season, competed in the Champions League this season, have clean sheets against Arsenal, AC Milan, Manchester City and Manchester United in the current campaign. They were hit for 7.27: not in the actual scoreline, which had a respectability, but in the measure of the opportunities.
