Liverpool FC news: Roberto Firmino v Diogo Jota statistical analysis - should the Brazilian be worried?
Is Roberto Firmino's position in Liverpool's front three under threat after Diogo Jota's stunning start at Anfield? Richard Jolly investigates, with a thorough look at the numbers.
In a sense, Roberto Firmino returns to where his Liverpool career took off on Sunday. His first goal took 14 games but came in a 4-1 demolition of Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium.
Jurgen Klopp had pioneered his tactic of using the Brazilian as a hyperactive false nine in a 3-1 victory at Chelsea. After he opened his account in a second landmark win, his primacy in Klopp’s system was rarely questioned.
Until now, perhaps. The combination of Firmino’s diminishing returns and Diogo Jota’s outstanding start offers an alternative. Certainly Jota is shaping up as the anti-Firmino. In the Premier and Champions Leagues, the newcomer has seven goals from 11 shots on target. He has more goals in his last four games (six) than Firmino has scored for Liverpool in 2020. It is the prolific against the profligate.
The Portuguese overperforms his xG, with five goals from an expected xG of 2.7 in Europe and three goals from an expected goals of 1.39 in the Premier League. The Brazilian, with one goal from an xG of 1.80 in the Premier League, underperforms his.
Perhaps it is a small sample size, but for Jota it is a role reversal and for Firmino part of a trend; last season he was the division’s greatest underachiever, with nine goals from an xG of 16.69, but Jota, with seven goals from an xG of 12.02, was fourth on the list of the statistically profligate, separated only by Gabriel Jesus and David McGoldrick.
But Jota can score in fits and spurts and he is in scoring form now. Firmino, arguably, has not been for a while.
If it felt a complete outlier that Liverpool won the league with 99 points while their No. 9 got a solitary league goal at Anfield, Firmino now only has 10 goals from 48 league games.
His contribution obviously extends far beyond his goal tally - read more on that here - but he has been trending downwards as a scorer since his superlative 2017/18, when he got 27 goals, 15 of them in the Premier League. That has gone down to 16 in all competitions, then 12.
It can feel that Firmino becomes still more selfless, doing still more work for Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah. However, the numbers suggest he is simply a worse finisher.
While he has only had three shots on target in the Premier League this season, in the three previous campaigns he averaged 1.14, 1.07 and 1.11 shots on target per 90 minutes respectively. They show rare consistency; the difference was in the return.
His xG per 90 minutes actually rose to 0.49 last season, up from 0.34 two years earlier, so he was getting in good positions more often.
He averaged a goal every 0.40 shots on target in 2017/18. By last season, it was 0.24. Last season, he had 13 shots from inside the six-yard box, one more than in 2017/18. Indeed, whereas he had 55 shots from inside the 18-yard area in the previous two campaigns, that was up to 85 in 2019/20.
Perhaps the most striking deficiency, for a right-footed player, is how few goals he gets with his preferred foot: three from 49 shots last season. The only area where Firmino tends to overperform his expected goals is with headers.
It does not make him clinical. Firmino scored from 9 percent of his shots (on or off target) last season, a return that put him 93rd in the division, between Craig Dawson and Jeff Hendrick and just behind Trent Alexander-Arnold; Mane, who found the net with 24 percent of his, was second only to Mason Greenwood.
In his best year, Firmino scored with just over one in six shots, 17 percent, which put him 24th. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most potent finishers are often found in the top 10; for instance, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has been fifth, 10th and first respectively in the last three campaigns.
Klopp has always accepted the trade-off with Firmino; a comparative lack of goals and relatively wasteful finishing for his all-round game.
He has remained creative. It is another respect in which he peaked in 2017/18, with 3.92 shot-creating actions per 90 minutes. But since then, he has registered 3.49, 2.92 and then 3.06 this season so far. His eight assists last season was his highest in the Premier League and, from a small sample size, two in seven games puts him on course to beat that. Over four previous campaigns, he was remarkably consistent as a creator, averaging 0.21, 0.23, 0.21 and 0.24 assists per 90 minutes.
That put him 20th in the division last season. If that sounds unremarkable, it is worth noting only two of the first 19 – his fellow xG underachiever Jesus and Lys Mousset – usually played as a centre-forward; the others were midfielders, wingers, No. 10s or Alexander-Arnold. Jota, meanwhile, was 176th.
But part of the rationale for Klopp’s experiments with 4-2-3-1 may lie in Firmino’s deteriorating output in front of goal.
His midfield lacks a regular scorer, so if Firmino is not scoring, he only has Mane and Salah. It is safe to assume the familiar formula of 4-3-3 will be used at the Etihad Stadium so while Jota may be used more to compensate for Firmino’s failings as a finisher as a fourth forward at Anfield, on Sunday it feels a choice between the form player and a fading force in front of goal.
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