Darwin Nunez and Mohamed Salah have something in common with some recent high-profile misses
Among Liverpool’s countless problems this season is their frequent inability to convert their best opportunities. In only one of their 20 league matches have they scored both of their two highest expected goal value shots.
The Reds have missed 45 Opta-defined big (or ‘clear-cut’) chances, at least seven more than any other side in the Premier League. There are worse problems to have – their attack remains top-four standard while their defence absolutely does not – but it would obviously paper over other cracks in the team if a few more goals were scored.
Liverpool have won eight and drawn one of the nine league matches in which they have led this term, after all. Darwin Nunez has squandered 16 big chances, the most of any player in the division, while Mohamed Salah is joint-third on 12 (with Erling Haaland in-between with 14).
Each of the Reds’ forwards has missed a golden opportunity in one of the last two matches. It was Salah in the FA Cup at Brighton, firing wide of the goal when put clean through by Harvey Elliott. His Uruguayan colleague was the guilty party at Molineux, though at least his effort was on target after a delicious long pass from Trent Alexander-Arnold had carved the Wolves defence open.
It is unrealistic to expect a player to convert every chance they get, even if we only focus on the highest quality openings. There was something noteworthy about the aforementioned examples, though. The two players were on the opposite side of the penalty area to where they played for the majority of the match.
Salah’s shot was his second furthest left touch of the 2-1 loss on the south coast and a look at his shot map on Understat shows how rarely he scores from that sort of position. Among his 125 Premier League goals for the club (second to Robbie Fowler’s 128), only two have been from left of the six-yard box: his unforgettable strike to seal a 2-0 win against Manchester United in January 2020, and a goal at West Ham in only his 11th eague appearance.
The Brighton opportunity was of higher xG value than any that he has missed from that area in the league, but it doesn’t alter that it’s the side of the box in which Salah is not prolific. Yet the general analysis implied that he would score from there if in top form.
Clearly Nunez does not have as big a sample for analysis, either with Liverpool or before. The pattern is broadly similar, though. Against Wolves, Darwin took aim with a clear-cut chance from just within the width of the six-yard-box, on the right of the penalty area. It is one of nine shots he has had in the box and right of the right-hand goalpost, none of which have found the net. Even with Benfica, in the kinder climes of the Primeira Liga, he only scored four goals from that zone.
Now look at his 10 goals for Liverpool. Three of Nunez’s five in the league have been hit from the left of the penalty spot, as have all three in Europe as well as his strikes in the Community Shield and FA Cup. The goal against Wolves in the latter was from a near-identical spot as where Salah had his chance at Brighton.
Similarly, Nunez’s Molineux miss was in an area from which Salah has done so much damage over the years. Of course, the duo can’t be permanently stationed on their regular sides of the pitch at all times, else these chances wouldn’t have come about in the first place. Jurgen Klopp needs to consider how to get them in their premium positions more often, though, and then Liverpool might not feature so heavily in the ‘big chances missed’ chart.
