Between scoring the only goal of the game and full-time at Anfield on Tuesday evening, Inter Milan failed to have a single shot.
Alexis Sanchez’ red card, coming as it did only a minute after Lautaro Martinez had given the Italian champions hope, clearly played a part in that.
Nonetheless, a Liverpool goal in the closing stages would clearly have put the tie to bed and with 14 minutes to play the Reds’ front three almost delivered it.
Virgil van Dijk won a header (as he usually does) and the ball reached Diogo Jota. He flicked it on to Sadio Mane, who carried it forward and played a perfect pass into the path of Mohamed Salah, 12 yards from goal.
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While it’s pointless to read too much into expected goal figures for single shots due to the wide variety of factors at play in every chance, per Infogol Salah’s opportunity carried the same xG value as Inter’s entire output on the night.
While the Egyptian guided the ball past goalkeeper Samir Handanovic, it hit the left-hand post and bounced away to safety.
"I hit the post a couple of times," Salah said after the match. "Maybe next game I’ll score three but the most important thing is that the team performed and we’re through into the next round.”
He wasn’t wrong in terms of the importance of the aggregate result, nor the likelihood that he will score again before long.
But a less obvious issue surrounding Salah’s second striking of the woodwork is that it denied Mane a rare assist.
While this doesn’t particularly matter, anyone taking a glance at the Senegalese forward’s statistics for 2021/22 will see that he has created just one goal, which does not paint his efforts in a good light.
Mane’s single assist of the campaign so far occurred in the 4-0 win over Arsenal in November. Although he was clean through on goal himself, he squared the ball to Salah for a Kop end tap-in.
But his colleagues’ failure to put away any of other big chances he has fashioned leaves Liverpool’s number 10 looking far less creative than he is in reality.
When it comes to setting up clear-cut chances – defined by Opta as those where you expect the attacker to score – nobody is getting close to Trent Alexander-Arnold.
By playing in Luis Diaz for a late shot against Inter, the Liverpool right-back created his 22nd clear-cut chance of the season, just one shy of his personal best from two years ago.
Salah is next in the standings, with 13, and then comes Mane on 11. The former Southampton man might afford himself a rueful smile should he ever look at the conversion statistics.
Where only one of the big chances he has set up has been scored, Andy Robertson has picked up five assists from the 10 clear-cut opportunities he has generated for his team-mates.
Further down the standings, the conversion rate for golden opportunities created by James Milner is three out of three, and the two Curtis Jones has provided were tucked away too.
There are two aspects of this anomaly which could make this hard to swallow for Mane. Firstly, he has been here before, in 2018/19. He created nine clear-cut chances in that campaign and only one was converted. While he did pick up another assist, it left him finishing with only two for a season in which he was superb.
The other issue is that eight of the 11 he has set up this term have been for Salah, meaning he has missed seven of them.
Prior to the match with Inter, Mane presented his fellow African with excellent chances against Leeds United, Brentford, Porto, Everton and Chelsea (both at Stamford Bridge and in the Carabao Cup final), only to see them all go begging.
As Salah has converted 16 of the 28 clear-cut chances his other colleagues have given him (for a 57% hit rate), Mane can rightly feel a little hard done by.
And this means that he is arguably Liverpool’s secret creative talent. If Salah does score three in the next match, hopefully Mane sets up a couple of them.
