Liverpool have found their answer to Kevin De Bruyne…

Liverpool have found their answer to Kevin De Bruyne as new creative influence goes under the radar

Assists are such a strange metric that it is pointless considering them if you want to assess how creative a player is. Someone can tee up a teammate for a tap-in with a brilliant pass, yet if they don’t convert the opportunity then the creator obviously does not receive credit for an assist.

This is an issue which has unfortunately affected Harvey Elliott in his Liverpool career. Prior to the 3-1 win over Southampton, the young midfielder had created eight Opta-defined clear-cut chances for Liverpool and every one of them had been missed.

To put that into context, Andy Robertson has set up four such chances this season and three of them have led to goals, and therefore assists for the Scot. Even if Elliott’s first eight were only of average value – and Mohamed Salah’s miss against Bournemouth following his pass was the joint-highest xG chance Liverpool have had in the last five years – there’d be just a 1.9 per cent likelihood that the former Fulham youngster wouldn’t have a single assist.

To say Elliott was unfortunate to not create a goal in his first 21 Premier League appearances for the Reds is putting it very mildly. Enter Darwin. Nunez might have found the woodwork with an Elliott-created clear-cut chance against Crystal Palace, but he made no mistake when the Saints paid a visit to Anfield.

They were broadly similar passes to the Uruguayan too, both flighted deliveries towards the left side of the penalty box. Elliott is rapidly becoming the master of diagonal passes which create high value scoring opportunities.

And even if we disregard his creativity, the 19-year-old has become arguably the most important midfielder in the Premier League when it comes to the play prior to a key pass. One way of measuring this is to look at xGBuildup, a metric which is the ‘total xG of every possession a player is involved in without key passes and shots” (per Understat). In other words, it gives credit for taking part in a possession sequence which results in a goal attempt when not taking the shot or creating the chance.

In this data, Elliott would receive no credit for his assist against Southampton. Despite that, the match was his new personal best in the Premier League for xGBuildup. His total of 1.16 from that game has only been topped three times for the Reds by Thiago Alcantara, with the former Bayern Munich man the poster boy for excelling at the pass before the pass.

Elliott’s efforts against the Saints helped lift his xGBuildup average to 0.66 per 90 minutes in 2022/23, which is an increase on the 0.57 he posted last season (and he has already more than doubled his game time from 2021/22). It also means he’s comfortably the top midfielder in the Premier League for this metric this term.

Only Kyle Walker is ahead of Elliott on a per 90 basis in any position, and he has played 293 fewer minutes. It’s also interesting to look at the rates per 100 touches, which the graph in the above tweet incorporates.

For instance, Kevin De Bruyne is 0.12 per 90 behind Elliott for xGBuildup this season despite averaging more touches thanks to Manchester City’s higher possession average. Normalise their figures on a per 100 touch basis and the Liverpool man holds a 0.20 advantage. It’s the same story to varying degrees for the other 18 players on the above chart too – their gap to Elliott only grows once touches are factored into the equation.

This is not a metric likely to ever dominate the mainstream. Goals and assists are easy to visualise, passes in possession sequences far less so. But the importance of build up in helping a team to attack well is undeniable. Elliott could prove to be an understated attacking gem for Liverpool, with his clear-cut chance record implying more assists look likely too.

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