Liverpool’s Control Game: Why Burnley Were Never Unlucky

Breaking down the stats that prove Liverpool’s narrow win at Burnley was complete dominance, not luck.

There’s been a lot of noise since the Burnley match, Sky told you Burnley were unlucky. Some fans parroted it, but I’ve looked at the data, I’ve broken it down and I’m telling you now: Burnley weren’t unlucky, not even close. They were dominated in every meaningful metric. If anything, they were lucky to only lose by one. Liverpool might not have played pretty football at Turf Moor, but it was brutally efficient. Let’s look at the numbers and cut through the narrative.

Burnley Were Not In the Game

We had 27 shots, 14 of those inside the box, and Burnley blocked over half of them. That sounds like defensive solidity, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t proactive defending, it was last-ditch, it was desperate. They were camped in, they were hoping to be able to get out and have some relief from the pressure, but as the below pass maps shows, they could not manage to build any meaningful attacks.

The game had a 90% field tilt in our favour. That’s domination, that means 90 percent of the attacking territorial possession happened in their defensive third. For most of the second half, it might as well have been 100%. Alisson could’ve made a cup of tea. Burnley didn’t have a single touch in our box after half-time. as the below plot shows we converted all of our possession into a high field tilt % emphasising our dominance of the territory.