“In the whole game we didn’t win enough challenges, to be honest. They win a challenge and all of a sudden we are completely open, how is that possible? We have two or three players in a challenge, moving toward the ball. When you are there, you have to win the ball, if you don’t do that and they get out, it looks like ‘eh, where are they?’.
The above was part of Jurgen Klopp’s assessment of his side’s performance in their 2-2 FA Cup draw with Wolves. It’s clear the Liverpool manager had a problem with how the men in red dealt with challenges, which are known as duels in the football data world. He was entirely on point when noting his players didn’t win enough of them.
Liverpool were only successful in 35 of the 81 duels which occurred on Saturday evening, a 43.2 per cent win rate. These figures do not correlate perfectly with winning matches, as three of the five games in which the Reds lost a greater proportion of the duels this season were victories against Manchester City (in the Community Shield), Newcastle United and Napoli. There are wider trends which are of grave concern though.
