Control and xG Leaders: Can Arne Slot’s Liverpool Continue Good Start at Old Trafford?

After two wins from two in the Premier League, Arne Slot’s start at Liverpool has been an impressive one. He faces his biggest test yet on Sunday though when his team travels to Old Trafford to face Manchester United.

Few teams, if any, have been under the microscope as much as Liverpool in the first two games of the 2024-25 Premier League season.

With a new man in the dugout for the first time since 2015, everyone has been waiting to see how the Reds would look under Arne Slot.

Former boss Jürgen Klopp always said he wanted his Liverpool teams to be so recognisable for their style of play that you could tell it was them even if they wore a different kit.

Slot was apparently the chosen man to replace the iconic German because his preferred style is so similar, but with some notable differences.

Liverpool have begun the campaign with 2-0 wins over Ipswich Town and Brentford, and sure enough, it has mostly looked like the same old team, scoring goals via the familiar routes of sumptuous passes from Trent Alexander-Arnold, ruthless finishes from Mohamed Salah and even one on a fast counter-attack from an opposition corner.

There have been some subtle changes, though.

After rebuilding much of the team that won the UEFA Champions League and Premier League in recent years, Klopp described his last squad as “Liverpool 2.0”.

On Sunday, Slot takes his Liverpool side to Old Trafford to face Manchester United, and ahead of the Dutchman’s first big test, we look at how what we’ve dubbed ‘Liverpool 2.1’ is shaping up.

Liverpool fans will have been much happier with their 2023-24 campaign than Manchester United fans were with theirs. The former finished third while the latter stuttered to eighth. Both came away with a trophy to their name (EFL Cup for Liverpool, FA Cup for United), but it’s fair to say Liverpool had the better season.

However, in three meetings between the two old rivals, Klopp’s men were left frustrated each time. A dour 0-0 draw at Anfield was followed by an exhilarating seven-goal thriller in the FA Cup, which United edged 4-3 after a late Amad Diallo goal in extra-time. When they met at Old Trafford again in the league a few weeks later, Liverpool were very much in the title race and so a win was especially important. They could only draw 2-2, though, which proved to be the beginning of the end of their title challenge.

Liverpool had 62 shots in their two Premier League matches against Man Utd last season (34 Anfield, 28 Old Trafford), with no side having ever had more against a single opponent in a season on record (from 2003-04) in the competition.

It’s not to say that Klopp had a problem with beating United. After all, his Liverpool defeated their old enemy 5-0 at Old Trafford and 4-0 at Anfield in the 2021-22 season, and 7-0 at Anfield the season after.

Slot might not be expecting to earn a win by quite those margins in his first game against them, but he will want an early statement victory at what has been a notoriously difficult place for Liverpool to go to in the past.

So, what sort of performance can we expect based on Liverpool’s first two games under the former Feyenoord boss?

Speaking to Canal+ before the season began, Slot said of his tweaks to Liverpool’s previous style: “Maybe the only slight difference is that after we win the ball, I like to go forward just as Jürgen liked it, but I sometimes like it when players try to keep the ball and not play the difficult ball, where Jürgen or the former regime maybe liked the chaotic scenes… They were really, really, really successful with that for so many years.

“But it sometimes also depends a bit on the players you have. I think we’re trying to find the balance between trying to create chaos at certain moments and trying to keep possession of the ball a bit longer in other moments.”

And that has been a theme so far; control. Liverpool have won a lot of games in recent years, but it hasn’t always felt like plain sailing through calm seas. In both wins against Ipswich and Brentford, they rarely looked in any danger after taking the lead.

OptaJoe posted after the Brentford game that Liverpool’s passing accuracy of 92% was their best on record (since 2003-04) in a Premier League game. Post-match checks reduced that to 91.4%, making it the fourth best, but it was still very impressive for Slot’s first home game.

Obviously, it must be taken into account that two games is a very small sample size, but Liverpool have averaged 62.2% possession, up slightly from 61.3% in Premier League games last season. They have 2.66 expected goals (xG) per game so far compared to 2.35 per game in 2023-24, but more notably, have only conceded 0.5 xG per game compared to an average of 1.22 xG against last season.

Again, the relative strength of their opponents must be considered, but after the first two matchdays Liverpool have recorded the highest xG in the Premier League (5.31) and the lowest xG against (1.0). In fact, their non-penalty xG is 1.45 more than any other team (Man Utd 3.86 non-pen xG).

They’re not yet being as aggressive in their press, though. Liverpool won possession in the opposition’s final third 6.1 times per game in the league last season but have done so just 3.5 times per game in their opening two outings under Slot.

One curious aspect of Liverpool’s first two games of the season has been the difference in several metrics from the first half to the second. Anyone who watched their opening victory at Ipswich would not have needed telling that they were much better after the break, but it was perhaps less obvious in the win over Brentford.

Liverpool have attempted 37 shots in their two games, only eight of which came in the first half, with the other 29 arriving in the second. They have accumulated 0.81 xG in the first 45 of their games and 4.5 xG in the second. They’ve also been marginally stronger going the other way, conceding 0.64 xG against in the first half and just 0.36 xG against in the second.

As Ipswich haven’t been in the Premier League for 22 years, it was difficult to take too much from that game, but as a test in England’s top flight, Brentford are almost the quintessential examination.

Liverpool won 2-0 in relatively comfortable fashion, with Luis Díaz and Salah scoring the goals. Compare that to the same fixture last season, when they won 3-0 via two goals from Salah and one from Diogo Jota.

However, in last season’s game Liverpool had 17 shots to Brentford’s 16, and the shot count was a more one-sided 19-8 last Sunday. In November 2023, Liverpool’s xG was only 0.03 greater than Brentford’s (1.71 to 1.68), while their meeting last week saw the hosts record 2.1 xG more than the visitors on the day (2.65 to 0.55).

As you can see from the average positions below (only accounting for positions before the first substitution was made), with last season’s home win over Brentford compared to last weekend’s victory, there was little difference in terms of how high Liverpool played. The only notable difference was that Klopp used Cody Gakpo in midfield instead of his usual attacking role, and the Dutchman understandably played a few yards higher last year than Alexis Mac Allister did on Sunday. Ryan Gravenberch almost averaged exactly the same position on the centre spot as Wataru Endo did in 2023.

You can also see from the respective touch zone maps below the difference in terms of where Liverpool had most of their touches against Brentford. Last season they focused a lot of their attack down the right with Salah and Alexander-Arnold. This time, the approach was more focused centrally, with a more even spread across the pitch generally.

So, can Liverpool show similar improvements in their performance against Manchester United on Sunday?

As mentioned, their 2-2 draw at Old Trafford in April was a frustrating one for Liverpool, not least because they dominated the game. Klopp’s men had 28 shots to United’s nine, recording an xG of 3.67 to the hosts’ 0.70.

United failed to record a single shot in the first half, the first time that had happened in a Premier League game at Old Trafford since October 2015 against Manchester City, but Liverpool conceded twice in the second half and actually had to rely on an 84th-minute penalty from Salah to avoid defeat.

Will Slot’s slightly revamped Liverpool be able to dominate as much, and more importantly, turn that into a victory this time?

Looking at Liverpool’s zones of control from their first two games of this season, they have controlled both quite comfortably. Ipswich and Brentford are not Manchester United, but then Erik ten Hag’s men allowed Liverpool to control proceedings in their league clash at Old Trafford last season.

United have added to their squad over the summer and don’t have quite as many defensive injuries as they did in 2023-24, so they should be set up to play better than they did in last season’s meeting. They lost at Brighton last weekend in a game they deserved to get at least a draw from, and Ten Hag’s side looked decent in their first home game of the season against Fulham, when a late Joshua Zirkzee goal gave them a 1-0 win.

But with a fully fit squad to pick from, all three of his first-choice forwards having found the net already, and potentially a newly arrived Federico Chiesa among his options on the bench, Slot will fancy his chances of being more ruthless in the opposition’s penalty area than Liverpool were in April’s fixture.

It has been a solid start, but Manchester United away is the first big test for Slot and his team. Getting a win at Old Trafford on his CV this early could be the catalyst for optimism about Liverpool 2.1 ramping up even further.

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