Liverpool are top of the table. Liverpool also completing the top three. Liverpool top another table, too, where they also have a share of second place and a tie in fourth.
None of those are the actual Premier League table, as Pep Guardiola has probably noted, where Jurgen Klopp’s side sit second, a point behind Manchester City. But the Anfield domination of the individual charts is both impressive and instructive. The three leading assisters in the division are Trent Alexander-Arnold, Mohamed Salah and Andy Robertson, with the right-back one clear of his two team-mates. Were Salah not to kick another ball this season, he would probably still win the Golden Boot. In distant pursuit, Diogo Jota is, along with Son Heung-min, his closest rival. Sadio Mane is one of three players on 12 goals.
That City don’t figure highly on either leaderboard certainly does not mean they are dullards, defending their way to the title. Rather, it points to different models, which reflect tactics and personnel alike. Liverpool have outscored City, but by seven goals. City are prolific, but in a collective way. It suits Pep Guardiola’s collectivist ethos that they share the goals around. At Anfield, there is a stricter division of responsibilities.
Only the forwards are expected to score. Salah, Jota and Mane have 46 of their league goals. Roberto Firmino can be the non-scoring striker but he has five. Luis Diaz’s tally of two, from his brief time on Merseyside, and the two Divock Origi and Takumi Minamino have scored take their forwards to 57 goals, a total only topped by City and (just) Chelsea. Only two other Liverpool players have more than two: Virgil van Dijk, from set-pieces, and Fabinho, from set-pieces and penalties. Klopp’s midfielders rarely score in open play, but nor are they required to.
Nor, really, do they assist. It reflects a formation in which they provide the platform for the full-backs to sprint past them and cross. Look at assists alone and a conclusion could be drawn that Liverpool’s lack of midfield creativity is a problem; Jordan Henderson has five assists, Thiago Alcantara two, no one else more than one. In reality, they are involved earlier in moves, rather than supplying the final ball.
Liverpool’s can feel a unique model in one respect, City’s in another. For a second consecutive season, they could win the title with a false nine (or, more accurately, several). Sergio Aguero became a bit-part player last season and is gone but not replaced, despite City’s famous flirtation with Harry Kane .
Instead, they have a phalanx of scorers and creators. Liverpool have three players with more than five goals. City have six. They have a trio of top scorers on 10. Raheem Sterling is the closest they have to a poacher, Riyad Mahrez the penalty taker and Kevin de Bruyne the kind of footballer Liverpool don’t have, a goalscoring midfielder. Last year, the former Klopp ally Ilkay Gundogan emerged from the pack to become their most prolific player. Now he and the versatile duo of Phil Foden and Bernardo Silva complete the sextet.
City have got goals from different players, different positions and at different points. The last of Silva’s seven strikes came on December 4. De Bruyne has taken over, with eight since then. Mahrez scored in four matches in a row in December and January. City’s formula may be harder to perfect: they have failed to score four times, to Liverpool’s one, and in 11 games, they have got under two goals, to just six for Klopp’s team.
But they have a band of creators. Only six Liverpool players, all full-backs or forwards, have an expected assists total of 2.00 or more this season. Ten of the City squad do, including centre-back Ruben Dias, who has three assists. It feels slightly unlikely that Gabriel Jesus, with seven, has the most assists at the Etihad Stadium, even if it reflects rather better finishing of the chances he has fashioned than those De Bruyne and Silva have made. But there is a contrast to Liverpool: three of City’s top five chance creators, in the Belgian, the Portuguese and Gundogan, are midfielders and the other two, Foden and Jack Grealish, can play there.
In their idiosyncratic ways, Guardiola and Klopp have been the scourge of the striker; one by packing his team with midfielders, the other by getting the wingers to outscore Firmino. They have found alternative recipes for potency but, wherever the title ends up, the individual awards for scoring and making goals seem destined for Anfield.
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