TOMKINS: THE PLAYERS LIVERPOOL LACKED
Paul Tomkins 08 June 2009

A lot of people have talked about what Liverpool lacked this season, and it's true that almost any team (and squad) can be improved in some way or another.
While more depth in quality can only help (providing it doesn't cause unrest/sulking), what Liverpool lacked most this past year was almost certainly in the squad all along. I've spent the last few months researching and writing 'Red Race: A New Bastion', and just one aspect has been to try and assess, amongst many other things, the true impact of each and every player in 2008-09. As well as assessing the players using eyes and gut instinct –– it doesn't need stats to tell us that the likes of Steven Gerrard and Xabi Alonso were particularly impressive –– I've tried to look into the context of those performances. And the information I've compiled (with the wonderful assistance of a few willing Reds) continues to throw up some revealing insights. How did the team do when each individual player started? How did the team perform in their absence? What was the quality of opposition they faced if, unlike Reina and Carragher, they didn't feature in every league game? What form was the opposition experiencing at the time of each match they played in? Four names in particular have leapt out from the analysis, not least because they are four key 'spine' players who missed a reasonable amount of football this past year. I think we've seen this season that Liverpool don't 'rely' on any one player anymore. Enough games were won in the absence of Gerrard and/or Torres to know that they can be missed for a game here or there, even against the toughest sides. But take the best players out of any side for an extended period of time, or from games in which their presence is especially vital to what the manager wants to achieve, and that team will inevitably suffer. First of all, a word of praise for Martin Skrtel, before noting the skills of his main rival for a place in the team. On average the Slovakian played against higher quality opposition (based on final league positions) than Daniel Agger. However, the latter tended to play against teams who were more in-form at the time (based on their previous five results). Skrtel's more robust, no-prisoners style was certainly helpful at places like Old Trafford and Goodison Park. But whichever way I looked at the figures, Agger came out as one of the season's most influential figures; all the more amazing considering that he had his own injury struggles, both at the start of the campaign (after missing virtually all of the previous season) and in the New Year. I still don't think he reached his best levels, mostly due to those injuries, but he adds something special to the side. When Agger played, Liverpool won 78 per cent of league games, as opposed to the 66 per cent average of the full 38-game season. Perhaps it was just a coincidence that he was fit at the times when the team was on form, and that has to be considered with any of these findings. But if the team does well when containing certain players, even if they don't have their best games as individuals, it suggests something is working. The average points-per-game when the Dane featured was 2.4, which was more than United's 2.3 to reach 90 points. Agger started against Arsenal twice, and away at Chelsea, so it's not like he only faced the cannon fodder. However, the reason I've also assessed the quality of the opposition, and their form at the time, is to try and put such averages into some kind of context. When excluding those who made only a couple of appearances, the star in terms of these Premiership averages was Emiliano Insua, with a 90 per cent win rate (nine wins, one draw), and an average of 2.78 points every time he played (or 105 points extrapolated over 38 games!). But the context is that the quality and form of the opposition were both below average; not massively, but enough to suggest he played in more 'winnable' games than some other players. Even so, he deserves great credit for how he performed. On average, Agger played against fractionally better opposition than Insua, but in far more games against sides in good form. Liverpool lost as many games with Agger as they did without (one), but perhaps crucially, only 11 of the 20 games he missed were won, with 8 draws. So the stats suggest what many fans sense: that Agger's extra quality on the ball helps Liverpool win more games, whereas the other defenders excel at stopping the opposition. Given that Agger featured in just under half of the league games, it's tempting to think how much more he could offer next season, if fit –– particularly in those home games against negative opposition, when draws need to become wins. By stepping into midfield at the right times, he opens up teams. But Agger wasn't the player whose absence was most keenly felt; surprisingly, neither was it Torres. While they only missed five and seven games respectively, Alonso and Gerrard's absences reduced Liverpool's win-ratio to just over 40 per cent. None of these games were lost, but the majority were drawn. When Torres was missing, which was a lot more often, Liverpool's win-rate also dropped below its 38-game average, but not massively. But there is an interesting anomaly with Torres, and the same applies to Alonso. Of all the most vital players, Torres and Alonso, on average, faced the toughest opposition. It puts their own performances into context: I recently wrote about how Torres scored mostly against top opposition this season, but having now gone through his appearance record in fine detail, that's because injuries tended to rule him out of the games against weaker opponents. Ditto Alonso. Games like Wigan and Stoke away were draws that his scheming could have helped win; not least because at the time he was in imperious form, before sustaining an ankle injury against Preston in the FA Cup. It's also fair to point out at this stage that on average Albert Riera faced the toughest opposition of any Liverpool player, and of the season's star performers, Yossi Benayoun featured against the weakest. Riera also faced teams who were in good form, whereas Benayoun tended to play against teams lower in confidence. However, in the second half of the season, when he found his own confidence, Benayoun was an undoubted trump card. Riera's contribution was to add a new tactical element (genuine width) that saw the Reds' do so well against the rest of the top five: eight games, and he started them all, as his clever positioning opened up space for others. Perhaps he tired towards the end of the season because not only was it his first full Premiership campaign, but he'd played in the toughest games, too. Winning matches has become more important than ever before. In his five seasons, Benítez has twice posted a win percentage (66 per cent) better than in 17 of the club's 18 title triumphs. But Liverpool came 3rd and 2nd in these recent campaigns. And to win lots of games, you need to be able to rotate. Originally Benítez was told by pundits, 'Play your best XI every week.' No-one said anything about having a strong squad, other than the back-ups, while good, should only really play in emergencies. One major newspaper even ran a piece a couple of months back saying that Rafa's rotating went against the wisdom of Bob Paisley, ignoring how something that was right 30 years ago was not necessarily so in the modern age. It was a bizarre article. Did Paisley use ancient tactics? Of course not. This season, despite a number of recurrent injuries to key players (meaning they were constantly in and out of the team), Rafa made his usual amount of changes: on average, three per game. And Alex Ferguson? Almost four per game, easily the most by any manager in the past five years (the time covered by my records, and therefore almost certainly the most ever, given its relative newness). On no fewer than 15 occasions Ferguson made five or more changes from one league game to the next. But it worked. And that's always been my argument: there's no set amount of rotation necessary to succeed, and it also depends on the strength of your squad. All the same, rotation is an essential part of the modern game. Anyone who still denies that is living in the past. Who rotated least out of the top six? Aston Villa. By a long chalk. In a throwback to the old days, Martin O'Neill barely changed his side. The result? A great team for two-thirds of the season, before ultimately finishing with obvious tiredness, to drop out of the top four, and eventually finish below Everton. This seriously suggests that keeping your strongest side is no longer the answer, and that whatever the depth to your squad, you need to keep players fresh for 10 months, not six, in the high intensity age. While Fulham also largely eschewed rotation, they didn't have Europe to contend with, which meant far more recovery time, and far less travelling. Of course, Villa only had the Uefa Cup –– they weren't playing Europe's elite. So rotation becomes even more necessary when you play a tough Premiership game on a Saturday, a top European team midweek, and face another tough league fixture a few days later. Add all this together, and you can see the delicate balance necessary in order to keep the best players at their peak physical condition from August to May –– but also how the key players, while in need of tactical resting to keep them in top shape, have to be available to the manager for the vast majority of the campaign to succeed. Perhaps the most telling stat of the season is that the 14 times Gerrard and Torres started together, Liverpool won points at a rate that would have broken the English league record when extrapolated over 38 games. Without them starting, the total was a surprisingly impressive –– but not quite title-challenging –– 79. By contrast, the seven games Cristiano Ronaldo failed to start for United resulted in a pro-rata points haul of 76 points, a serious drop from the 90 they actually posted, which indicates just how important he is to them. But the major difference this season was that Alex Ferguson could name his best side three times as often as Benítez. ('Best' meaning the inclusion of those key men who play in all major games, if fit.) Only four times this season were Reina, Carragher, Gerrard, Alonso, Torres and Mascherano in the same starting XI. Ferguson could start his six 'key core' players together on 12 occasions. That the games in which Torres and Gerrard did start were also against better-than-average opposition in better-than-average form tells us this: what might have been. Oh, and what might yet soon be...