Stat of the Match: Southampton 2-3 Liverpool
Dr. Mourinho or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Error
Liverpool moved eight points clear at the top of the Premier League with a 3-2 win at Southampton on Sunday afternoon. Manchester City might be second, but the Reds’ advantage is such that the defending champions are closer to Bournemouth in 13th than they are to the top.
The match brought to mind the famous seven-point plan José Mourinho had for winning big games. Maybe he still has it, his matches just aren’t as important any more.
José’s to-do list was revealed by Spanish journalist Diego Torres, who wrote a biography of Mourinho based on his time with Real Madrid (with help from sources within the dressing room). The plan was later shared by Jonathan Wilson in The Guardian.
Liverpool’s game at St Mary’s was big for both ends of the league table, not in terms of it being between a pair of European giants in the Champions League. As such, it’s only the first three of the seven Mourinho mantras which felt relevant.
1) The game is won by the team who commits fewer errors.
2) Football favours whoever provokes more errors in the opposition.
3) Away from home, instead of trying to be superior to the opposition, it’s better to encourage their mistakes.
Southampton had four shots, collectively worth 0.17 expected goals, aside from their three for their two goals. Without the Reds’ mistakes that led to them - though their fine counter attack for the second deserves more credit than Liverpool blame - the Saints produced very little.
That was not the case for Arne Slot’s men, who had 27 shots in total. That’s their most on his watch, only the fourth time they’ve broken 20 in his 18 matches.
However, there is no question that blunders by the home side gave Liverpool a significant helping hand. In the opinion of Opta, Southampton made five defensive errors. The metric does not account for every possible mistake, it just highlights on-ball gaffes which directly result in shots. It gives a flavour of the fecklessness of a team.
And, boy, did Southampton taste sour on Sunday. Five errors is an absurdly high total. Since the summer of 2017, there had only been two previous instances of a team being so mistake-laden. One of them is particularly pertinent as we focus on the enormous week ahead.
When losing 4-3 at Anfield in 2018, Manchester City made five Opta-defined errors. What made it even more remarkable was that they occurred in the space of just 12 minutes, with Ederson (twice), Fernandinho, Nicolás Otamendi and Kyle Walker losing their heads in a period in which the Reds took the score from 1-1 to 4-1.
Let’s be clear, though. That City side were on their way to 100 points, not the Championship. They crumbled in a raucous Anfield atmosphere when faced with 336 pressures, the most Liverpool made in a league game between the summers of 2017 and 2022 (according to the Statsbomb data which used to reside on FBRef).
It was the match in which Reds rookie Andy Robertson practically pressed the whole side by himself at one point, cementing a bond with his new fanbase. What happened on the south coast on Sunday was not that, at all. It was a Southampton side repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot.
Only two of the six Opta-defined big chances Liverpool amassed in their latest victory came from the Saints’ statistically recorded errors. There were blunders galore in the Reds’ best attacking moments though.
In terms of shot-generating mistakes recorded by Opta, Mateus Fernandes lost possession on the edge of the box allowing Dominik Szoboszlai to have an attempt on target before Flynn Downes passed to the Hungarian enabling him to score.
From there, it became the Alex McCarthy show. Just as five errors by a team is rare, so is three by a player. The Southampton shot-stopper is one of only four men to have achieved this feat of peak calamity in the last seven years of Premier League football.
He began shortly before half time, passing to nobody in particular in the Saints’ box, with Cody Gakpo picking up possession to fire off a shot. McCarthy then went walkabout as Mohamed Salah collected the ball in the penalty area. That turned out to be a bad idea; who knew? The goalkeeper completed his hattrick by flapping at a corner, with Ryan Gravenberch poking the ball over the bar in the melee which followed.
These were just the blunders Opta felt were egregious enough to meet their requirements. Yukinari Sugawara conceded a very avoidable handball penalty, then a poor attempted clearance from Fernandes fell to Salah, who rattled the post.
Even so, these mistakes don’t just happen, no matter how much Russell Martin encourages his troops to play out from the back. Listen to José; teams have to ‘provoke’ errors, ‘encourage their mistakes’.
The first occurred thanks to Szoboszlai tackling Fernandes. His goal doesn’t happen without Curtis Jones pressing opponents in their box either. Granted, it’s hard to know what brain fog enveloped McCarthy, but the pressure the Reds put teams under is very hard to live with.
As the second half wore on, with the game tied, concerns grew that Liverpool would throw away a fantastic opportunity to win three points. We needn’t have worried, we should’ve just embraced the likelihood that Southampton would make another error soon enough. It’s just what they do, and Mourinho would’ve congratulated Slot for following his plan to a tee.
Some of the my favorite 12 minutes of the past decade!