Alexis Mac Allister’s performance at Bournemouth was easy to overlook. Liverpool won 1-0, Alexander Isak scored the winner and the defenders rightly took plenty of the praise. But go back through the game and Mac Allister’s influence becomes obvious.
Jeremy Jacquet, Ronald Araújo and Virgil van Dijk earned praise for their defensive work. Yet when I went back through the game, Mac Allister’s influence became increasingly difficult to ignore.
Seven recoveries. Four clearances. Two tackles. Fourteen passes into the final third. Nineteen line breaking passes.
Those numbers begin to explain what we were watching. Mac Allister was shielding Liverpool’s defence while repeatedly finding ways of moving the team through Bournemouth’s shape. There was an interception late in the game, there were passes punched through the lines and there was one delivery that could have released Victor Muñoz had the touch been better.
Michael Reid described it on Numbers Don’t Lie as a performance containing a seven out of ten contribution in every department. I think that captures it perfectly. Nothing needed to be spectacular because almost everything was good.
Mac Allister’s Numbers Reveal Something Significant
The Bournemouth performance matters because it fits a wider pattern.
Mac Allister’s Premier League numbers this season compared with last season show improvement across practically every metric we examined. There is an important qualification, of course. We are only five league games into the season, so this remains a small sample.
Still, what has changed is fascinating.
His passing accuracy has risen from 86.6% to 88.5%. His touches per 90 have increased from 63.0 to 69.8 and his passes from 48.6 to 53.2.
More revealing are the line breaking numbers.
Mac Allister averaged 10.1 line breaking passes per 90 last season. This season that figure stands at 16.7. His line breaking passes in the final third have climbed from 5.2 to 7.3, while defensive line breaking passes have risen from 1.0 to 1.8.
That tells us he is attempting the sort of passes Liverpool need to progress through opponents, and he is completing his overall passing at a higher rate.
Normally you might expect the opposite. Ask somebody to play more difficult, incisive passes and you accept that accuracy could suffer. Mac Allister is currently giving Liverpool both.
His defensive contribution has increased too.
Tackles have risen from 1.8 to 3.2 per 90, while possession won has moved from 3.8 to 5.6. Interceptions are the only one of the ten metrics we highlighted to have fallen, and even that is marginal, from 0.7 to 0.6.
Nine of those ten key metrics have improved across 308 Premier League minutes.
For a player who has watched Ryan Gravenberch and Dominik Szoboszlai receive new contracts while he has not, this is quite a response.
Mac Allister has already spoken about being disappointed by his contract situation. If he continues producing these numbers, Liverpool have something serious to think about.
For me, if Liverpool had a Champions League final tomorrow, Mac Allister starts in midfield.
That is probably the clearest way I can describe his current importance.
Trey Nyoni Is Making His Own Argument
Mac Allister’s emergence as Liverpool’s outstanding midfield performer also leads us towards another intriguing question.
What exactly do Liverpool have in Trey Nyoni?
We have to be careful here. Nyoni has played only 100 minutes across all competitions, with more than 60 of those coming in the League Cup against Tottenham. Per 90 statistics across such a small sample effectively resemble his raw totals.
Nobody should be making sweeping conclusions from that.
What we can say is that what Nyoni has done during those minutes has been extremely promising.
His duel success stands at 66.7%, compared with Mac Allister’s 52.5%. Nyoni has recorded 7.2 recoveries per 90 and 67.5 passes per 90, completing 95% of them.
The Bournemouth cameo interested me particularly.
Liverpool were protecting a 1-0 lead and Iraola introduced Nyoni before Gravenberch. That matters because these were meaningful Premier League minutes. Liverpool could not afford to concede.
Nyoni read situations, intercepted the ball and passed forward. Apart from a handball decision that I thought was harsh, he hardly put a foot wrong.
There is another piece of context worth remembering. Nottingham Forest reportedly made an offer for Nyoni at the end of the transfer window. After Liverpool had already lost Curtis Jones, there was never much prospect of another midfielder leaving for that sort of money.
Now we are beginning to see why Liverpool wanted him around.
Michael made the point that if Nyoni could reproduce these numbers across something like 1,500 minutes, Liverpool would have a brilliant player for the future. That is the challenge. Doing it for 100 minutes is encouraging. Doing it while starting Premier League matches is the real test.
There is inevitably a temptation to wonder whether he could start against Manchester City, particularly with Cody Gakpo expected to be unavailable.
One possibility would involve Szoboszlai moving to the right, potentially offering greater protection on that side, and Nyoni partnering Mac Allister centrally.
I understand the attraction. I would be tempted against a mid table side at Anfield. City feels like an enormous ask for a 19 year old making his first Premier League start.
His opportunity will come.
Milos Kerkez Shows Iraola’s Liverpool Is Evolving
Milos Kerkez offers a different type of statistical story.
Liverpool paid £40 million for a player who had been in the team of the year at Bournemouth under Iraola. One of the obvious hopes following Iraola’s arrival was that Liverpool might see that version of Kerkez again.
Five league games cannot answer that question.
There are, however, encouraging signs.
Kerkez is making 16.8 forward passes per 90, up from 15.1 last season. The percentage of his passes going forward has increased from 35.4% to 42.6%, while line breaking passes have climbed from 9.7 to 11.0.
Most encouraging for me are his movements without the ball.
Overlaps have increased from 1.4 to 2.1 per 90, while underlaps have gone from 1.7 to 2.3. That is something I wanted to see because getting forward and supporting the winger is one of Kerkez’s strengths.
There are areas requiring improvement.
His progressive carries have halved from 5.9 to 3.0 per 90, while total carry progress has dropped dramatically from 62.5 metres to 26.0. Duel success has fallen from 59.1% to 45.2%, and possession won has decreased from 3.5 to 2.3 per 90.
There may be an instruction behind some of that. Kerkez is passing forward more while carrying the ball less. Only Iraola knows precisely what he is asking from him.
Fitness may also be important. Kerkez has played more minutes than any Liverpool player across all competitions this season. Liverpool need him to rediscover the physical levels we saw at Bournemouth without running him into the ground while he is doing it.
Liverpool’s Midfield Has Given Iraola Decisions to Make
Liverpool return from the international break with Manchester City waiting at Anfield and several questions still unresolved.
Gakpo would be a significant absence. He is joint top for Premier League assists this season and leads the league for expected assists, all of which have come from open play because he does not take set pieces. All three of his league assists have been for Isak.
Liverpool will hope both players return quickly from their respective injury problems.
Araújo faces an enormous amount of international travel, while Mac Allister has Argentina commitments before returning for City. Those circumstances only add to Iraola’s decisions.
Yet amid those uncertainties, something encouraging has happened in midfield.
Mac Allister looks like the title winning midfielder Liverpool supporters remember. His passing is more progressive, his defensive numbers have improved and he has become, for me, the first midfield name on the team sheet.
Nyoni is pushing from behind with numbers that demand attention, however small the sample remains.
Kerkez, meanwhile, is beginning to show elements of the attacking full back Iraola knew at Bournemouth, particularly through those increased overlaps and underlaps.
There are still questions everywhere.
For once, some of the most interesting ones are being created by players giving Liverpool more options rather than fewer.