How Slot's pre-season briefings made Liverpool hard to beat

Liverpool have their manager to thank for victory over Chelsea and a strong start to the new Premier League season.

Photo: IMAGO | Anfield Index

Few would surely have envisaged Liverpool’s meeting with Chelsea on Sunday playing out exactly as it did.

In last season’s edition of this fixture, the Reds took 28 shots en route to a 4-1 victory that fully underlined the subsequent 19-point gap between the teams in the Premier League table.

And, while the early signs suggested that Enzo Maresca might have ushered in some improvement this year, it seemed farfetched to suggest his team would come to Anfield and dominate.

Yet the surface metrics from the game appear to show that is exactly what they did.

Across the 90 minutes, Chelsea claimed 58% of the possession while boasting an 88.1% pass completion - the highest of any away team at Anfield since records began in 2003-04. 

They also seemed to do plenty with their control of the ball, outshooting the Reds 12-8.

However, if these numbers suggest the visitors were extremely unfortunate to go down to a 2-1 defeat, then that only shows the importance of applying context.

And here, the key fact was that they were up against a team who have proven themselves to be incredibly difficult to score against since the start of the season.