Liverpool are not only the best team in Europe – stats show they are also the ‘cleanest’

Statistically, this is likely to be Liverpool’s greatest league season, which for a club with 18 championships is no small achievement. The only season that could conceivably beat this one came last year, when they did not win the title – a reminder that statistics must always be considered in context. Greatness lies not only in numbers.

And in a world in which Juventus can dispense with their manager after five successive league titles, and Barcelona sack theirs after two straight titles while top of the table, in which 95+ points has come to seem standard for a Premier League champion, it’s as well to be aware that domination of a domestic league does not mean quite the same thing that it did in the past.

Unassuming icon Trent Alexander-Arnold leads Liverpool’s league quest
This should not be seen as in any sense diminishing what this Liverpool side are doing, particularly given a net spend of only around £70m over the past four years and the fact they have had to overcome a brilliant Manchester City; rather it is to say the financial structures of modern football have inflated the gap between top and bottom, through wage bills even more than transfer spending. Even allowing for changes in the size of the league and the number of points for a win, 95 points is easier to achieve than it would have been in the days of Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley or Kenny Dalglish.

All of which is a slightly long-winded way of pointing out that different eras have different tariffs and that greatness comes in many forms. The modern idea of Liverpool was created by Shankly. When he took over the club in 1959, it may only have been 12 years since their previous league title but they had been in the Second Division for five years and had been knocked out of the FA Cup the previous season by non-league Worcester City. He improved Anfield and the training ground, developed a style of play and put together a squad who gained promotion in 1962 and won the title in 1964. It was the following season, though, when Shankly’s first great Liverpool probably reached their peak when they beat Leeds after extra time in the FA Cup final.

The image of Shankly was of a great motivator, someone with the charisma and will to build a club and bring a city (or half of it) with him. But that side were also tactically innovative, playing what was effectively a prototype 4-4-2, although with genuine wingers in Ian Callaghan and Peter Thompson. It was not necessarily a popular way to play, as was made clear by the Mirror’s report on the final, a clash of two sides who had long abandoned the traditional W-M. “More and more clubs,” wrote Ken Jones, “are turning to method and discipline … there was a certain hypnotic element about the whole thing. The fascination lay in trying to assess which side would first break the stalemate.”