Since losing 4-1 at Spurs, just how good has Liverpool’s defence become?

 IT’S just over 500 days since Liverpool lost 4-1 to Tottenham at Wembley and much has changed at both clubs since late 2017. For Spurs that win was seen as the moment they acclimatised to playing temporarily at the national stadium; their game at Anfield on Sunday will be the final match before finally beginning life at their new home. For Liverpool, the Wembley defeat left them in ninth place and already 12 points behind Manchester City after only nine games. Title hopes: gone before Halloween. Nevertheless, they rallied in the second half of the season and knocked Pep Guardiola’s team out of the Champions League on their rollercoaster run to the final, and that loss to Tottenham can be seen as a watershed moment. Such was the defensive weakness shown that day, it was clear that something had to change, and so it did.

Liverpool’s immediate response to the Spurs defeat was to go on a run of 10 wins and four draws from their next 14 Premier League games, the last of which was a 4-3 victory over City at Anfield. By this point the club had spent £75m on Virgil van Dijk and were only weeks away from filleting Roma in the Champions League, a result that went a long way to convincing Alisson Becker to join Van Dijk in the summer. The reduction in errors leading to goal since Tottenham has been significant, with only six since Simon Mignolet and Dejan Lovren both made one at Wembley.

The plot twist is that the four such errors made this season have come from Alisson (3) and Van Dijk. The goalkeeper’s are the flawed Cruyff turn at Leicester and a spilled cross at home to Manchester United, with both players getting one for the to me/to you Chuckle Brothers remix at Fulham in Liverpool’s most recent outing. Despite that, both men seem blessed by fortune, and all three of those games ended in wins. With the rest of the squad apparently immune to blunder these days, Liverpool are on course to concede 22-23 goals this season, which would be their second best return after the remarkable 1978-79 campaign when the Reds let in just 16 goals in 42 games.

Diving deeper into Liverpool’s defensive numbers and the work done by the club’s coaching and team is obvious. Since the start of 2016-17, Liverpool have stopped their opposition having a shot on target six times, but five of those came in 2016 or 2017. And yet as the numbers below show, since the Spurs debacle, there has been a significant reduction in xG conceded, almost a halving of the goals conceded and a decrease of nearly a shot on target per game. This apparently contradictory situation is in fact an illustration of how Klopp’s approach has evolved in his time at Anfield.

Early Jurgen Liverpool could subject an opponent to a frantic whirlwind that penned them in their own half, but then go on to ship goals with abandon in the next match. Liverpool conceded three or more goals in six different league games in 2016, six times in 2017 but only once in 2018 and (so far) 2019. And the instances in 2018 and 2019 both came in 4-3 wins at Anfield (against Manchester City and Crystal Palace), meaning that Liverpool have not let in three or more goals in any of their last 25 away league games, their best run since a spell of 28 under defensive grandmaster Rafa Benitez in 2009 and with a vague possibility of matching the club record of 38 set in the glory days of 1986.

Only two teams in English top-flight history have conceded fewer than 24 league goals and not won the title, Preston in 1890-91 (23 in 22 games so it doesn’t really count) and Arsenal in 1998-99 (17 in 38). That Arsenal side only scored 59 times, though, a total this Liverpool reached in early February, so we really are in uncharted territory here. Either Liverpool end their 29 year wait for a 19^th league championship or they set a new marker for what it takes to be a runner-up. Whichever, the defensive transformation Jurgen Klopp has visited upon the club in the last 18 months sets them up for future success, whether that be in the next two months or not.

A £10 on Liverpool to win the Premier League returns £30