The Champions League reaches its midpoint Wednesday night and if the last few rounds of fixtures are anything to go off, it will do so amid a hailstorm of goals. Wouldn't that be good news for Liverpool, even though their Champions League scoring record is already more impressive than in the Premier League? Meanwhile, there are plenty of high-stakes matchups at each end of the table.
Real Betis are one of only four teams still standing with a 100% record but that could well be tested on the road against Borussia Dortmund. At the other end of the table, Porto have a lot of work to do. Marooned in 35th, only the Portuguese league leaders and Slovan Bratislava are yet to get among the points.
Surely if they do not do something tonight against Napoli, their competition will be done, right? All that, plus Real Madrid, Arsenal and Manchester City in action tonight. It's sure to be a busy day.
If all you had to assess a team on from the season so far was the league phase table, you would believe that Liverpool are as advertised. That half a billion or so they have spent on their attack since the start of last season seems to be well spent, 12 goals from their first three Champions League games as Bradley Barcola, Florian Wirtz and Dominik Szoboszlai share in the scoring. Andoni Iraola's side may look a little vulnerable at the other end, but if you look at the talent in the Reds' roster, you score three, we'll score four-ball seems a pretty shrewd use of talent.
And yet the free-scoring Liverpool of the Champions League have been hard to spot in their domestic games. With the caveat that most teams' numbers take a dink after they run into Arsenal, at the nine-game mark in the Premier League season Liverpool have just 11 goals to their name. Only some of that can be accounted for through poor finishing -- Szoboszlai, Wirtz, Barcola and Cody Gakpo have two Premier League goals off 5.24 xG -- and the bigger issue is that this team ranks 11th in the league for expected goals.
As the graphic above indicates, there are quite widespread issues with the quality of shots Liverpool are settling for. Across Europe's top five leagues, the xG value of the average shot this season is 0.111. In no context do Iraola's team get particularly close to that mark.
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