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Liverpool‘s final Premier League fixture before Christmas will take place on Saturday, with the opposition in question being bottom-placed Watford.
The Hornets are 39 th in the Premier League having amassed only nine points from matches. TheRedswill be widely expected to win and score plenty of goals but once analysing Watford’s campaign, perhaps the biggest certainty of the match is a clean sheet for the home side.
Jurgen Klopp‘s men have struggled to prevent opposing teams from scoring this season, with only three clean sheets kept in the Premier League against Burnley, Sheffield United and Bournemouth.
This weekend, though, a fourth will surely follow according to the performances evidenced by Watford.
The team have scored only nine league goals up until this stage. That’s the fewest in the division by as many as five, with Crystal Palace in 19 th place with 14 goals scored.
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Interestingly, their current situation seems to stem from a lack of quality finishing rather than an inability to attack and create chances.
Expected Goals (xG) offers an insight into the likelihood of a shot being scored by considering aspects such as difficulty and location , and it tends to provide an accurate summary of whether a team deserved fewer or more goals based on their chances.
xG suggests that Watford should have scored .9 goals, but only nine have actually found the net. That’s an underperformance of around 10 goals which suggests that Watford have suffered from bad luck and players that simply haven’t finished chances as they should.
The side are near mid-table standard for shots taken, but only (**************************************% of those shots have hit the target which is again the worst in the league. Liverpool, by contrast, are in second place having found the target with 39. 5% of their shots.
Watford have found the target only 53 times in total this season which is more than only Palace, compared to Liverpool who can boast a figure of (shots on target at present.
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Nigel Pearson, who’s recently been appointed at Vicarage Road, has taken over the team that are also bottom of the division for goals per shot, compared to Leicester who are top followed by Liverpool in second. One goal is being scored by Watford every shots.
The Hornets appear able to generate opportunities, but they simply can’t finish them. That may be due to a lack of confidence or quality at the business end of the pitch but regardless, it does seem quite strange.
This season, Liverpool’s opponents are averaging only 9.7 shots at Anfield. It’s reasonable to suggest that Watford won’t create a great deal more than that, so the team will have very few opportunities to score which is effectively the opposite of what they need at the moment.
Ultimately, Pearson’s side may receive a boost from the infamous ‘new manager bounce’, but that will have to be significant if the team are to overcome their recent finishing capacity.
Premier League matches are impossible to predict, but the possibility of Liverpool keeping a clean sheet on Saturday is stronger than ever considering the defensive strength of Klopp’s Reds combined with the opposition’s inability to score.
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