Diogo Jota can be key to Liverpool avoiding unwanted…

Diogo Jota can be key to Liverpool avoiding unwanted 26-year record

Liverpool have nine games remaining to avoid doing something which hasn’t occurred for them since the 1996/97 season. They’ve recently had two opportunities to resolve the issue for this campaign too.

We’re talking about scoring a penalty in a Premier League season. The Reds only had one in their league campaign 26 years ago, with Robbie Fowler missing at Arsenal after he tried to tell the referee it shouldn’t have been awarded.

Mohamed Salah had no such concerns regarding the validity of the penalties against Bournemouth and the Gunners in recent weeks, though he unfortunately put both shots wide left of the goal. With his failures against AC Milan and Leicester last season, the Egyptian has missed four of his last 11 spot kicks. Is it time for someone else, perhaps Fabinho, to take over?

That’s for Jurgen Klopp to decide but taking the responsibility away from Salah would be a big call. Perhaps a largely moot one, though, as even with their two recent spot kicks Liverpool remain rooted to the bottom of the table for pro-rata penalty awards.

Since the start of 2017/18, a spot kick has been given for every 164 penalty box touches on average in the Premier League. Yet that figure is 220 for the Reds, the largest among the 13 clubs who have been consistently in the top flight in this period.

Salah has fared reasonably well on an individual level. The 30-year-old is joint-third for penalties won in the last six seasons, with 11, though he has had the most touches in opposition penalty boxes too. The thing which stands out about his record is that he had been fouled for six spot kicks by the end of April in his second season at the club, meaning it has only occurred five times (in the opinion of the officials) in the four years since.

There are 36 players who’ve won at least three Premier League penalties from the start of the campaign in which Liverpool claimed their 19^th championship onwards, and Salah has had more box touches to win each one than anyone else. He is joined in the bottom six of the standings by two colleagues past and present.

Salah has had 215 touches in the penalty area for each spot kick earned since the summer of 2019, behind Bukayo Saka (201), Jack Grealish (188) and Son Heung-min (163). Next in line are Sadio Mane (162) and Diogo Jota (152), though the latter’s penalty history is worth a closer inspection.

Mohamed Salah missed his penalty against Arsenal (2023 Liverpool FC)

The most recent example occurred at Anfield last weekend. After Arsenal failed to clear a corner, Jota nipped in ahead of Rob Holding to try to win the ball but settled for suffering a foul instead. The former Wolves man also played a key role in the penalty at Bournemouth, with his shot adjudged to have been handled by Adam Smith.

The ‘penalties won’ metric only focusses on fouls, so Jota did not receive official credit for that one. Nonetheless, the previous Anfield penalty in the league occurred after he was fouled by Watford’s Juraj Kucka in April 2022, and the number 20 also earned a spot kick after he was impeded by Vicente Guaita at Crystal Palace three months earlier. In short, Jota has effectively won Liverpool’s last three Premier League penalties, and three of the last four when a foul took place.

Even when they are scored, winning a penalty does not officially count as an assist. But even without them, only Salah (15) has set up more goals than Jota (11) since the Portuguese forward last found the net, over a year ago. His name may have been absent from the scoresheet for too long, but his contributions have been important. Another penalty win before the end of May would be most welcome too.

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