Mohamed Salah at It Again for Liverpool, and Boxing Day Bonanzas

Stat, Viz, Quiz is the Opta Analyst soccer publication. This week’s version appears at Boxing Day targets, Mohamed Salah, and being high at Christmas.

The large day is sort of right here. Many look ahead to all of it yr lengthy, bringing households collectively and turning some into huge youngsters once more.

Sure, Boxing Day soccer will quickly be upon us, and on this week’s SVQ we’ll take a look at aim numbers from Premier League fixtures which have taken place on 26 December lately.

We’ll additionally revisit an previous favorite topic, speaking about Mohamed Salah’s varied achievements. The Liverpool star was glorious once more on Sunday, and we now have a aim map that reveals simply how proficient the previous Roma man has been on Merseyside down the years.

We’ve not too long ago launched the 2024 Opta Analyst Quiz, which, if you happen to haven’t performed already, we are able to guarantee you is a lot enjoyable that it’ll have you ever laughing/crying/arguing with family and friends very quickly in any respect. However if you happen to fancy some bitesize trivia as a warm-up earlier than tackling that, we now have our weekly quiz right here too, in addition to a Christmassy Ask Opta query.

No matter you have a good time presently of yr, we hope you have got an exquisite time, beginning with consumption of the most recent SVQ.

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STAT – Boxing Day Bonanzas

It wouldn’t be Christmas if we didn’t have the compulsory reference to Boxing Day 1963 when there have been 66 targets throughout 10 video games within the English First Division.

Other than Leicester Metropolis’s 2-0 win over Everton and Sheffield Wednesday beating Bolton Wanderers 3-0, each different sport within the high flight featured a minimum of six targets that day, together with an 8-2 win for Blackburn Rovers at West Ham and a 10-1 victory for Fulham in opposition to Ipswich City.

As we prompt a few years in the past, it has turn out to be stylish in latest occasions to hark again to that day as an indication that Boxing Day is chaos yearly on account of gamers being too stuffed with turkey and pleasure to be bothered defending.

Then once more, Tottenham 3-6 Liverpool on Sunday perhaps factors to it being a factor in any case, albeit that wasn’t on Boxing Day, after all.

Is there something in it? Nicely, we’ve appeared again at the previous few years within the Premier League.

There have been 19 targets in 5 video games on Boxing Day final season (3.8 per sport), 25 in seven video games the season earlier than (3.6 per sport), and a whopping 28 targets in simply six video games in 2021-22 (4.7 per sport).

As you’ll be able to see from the desk under, the numbers have fluctuated a bit since 2014-15, however in the primary we now have been seeing extra targets the day after Christmas than traditional during the last decade.

The typical targets per sport within the Premier League ranged between 2.6 and a pair of.9 from 2014-15 to 2022-23, earlier than an increase to three.3 in 2023-24.

There are eight video games to be performed on Boxing Day this yr, and we’re seeing a median of three.0 targets per sport this season after 169 video games. What number of targets will we see on Thursday? Nicely, ‘tis the season for indulgence.

Don’t really feel like it’s a must to stretch your self an excessive amount of if you happen to occur to be a Premier League goalkeeper. Have one other Bailey’s (different Irish lotions can be found).

VIZ – Mo the Fourth Be With You

It’s that point of yr when a bearded man wearing crimson brings pleasure to hundreds of thousands… of Liverpool followers a minimum of.

And like jolly previous Saint Nick, Mohamed Salah continues to ship.

The Egyptian was on the centre of Liverpool’s demolition of Tottenham on Sunday, coming away with two targets and two assists, turning into the primary participant in Premier League historical past to succeed in double figures for each targets and assists in a season earlier than Christmas.

Salah has a minimum of 4 extra aim involvements (33) than anybody else from Europe’s high 5 leagues in all competitions this season, and already has 26 within the Premier League. He wants 19 extra in Liverpool’s final 22 video games to interrupt the document for essentially the most in a 38-game Premier League season, a document at the moment held by Thierry Henry and Erling Haaland, and 22 to beat Alan Shearer and Andrew Cole’s general document (47), achieved in 42-game campaigns.

Arguably most impressively of all, although, Salah moved as much as fourth in Liverpool’s all-time goalscorers listing. His two targets took him to 229 and edged him forward of legendary determine Billy Liddell (228), a person so integral to Liverpool within the Forties and Nineteen Fifties that the group was colloquially generally known as ‘Liddellpool’.

Contemplating Salah arrived at Anfield in 2017 with a popularity of being a ‘Chelsea flop’, it’s fairly unbelievable that solely Gordon Hodgson (241), Roger Hunt (285) and Ian Rush (346) now stand in entrance of him.

He’s within the ultimate yr of his contract at Liverpool, so time could also be working out for him to catch anybody else, although he’s solely 12 targets behind Hodgson.

Regardless of the future holds for Mohamed Salah, he’ll go down as the most effective gamers in Liverpool’s historical past, and certainly, of the Premier League period.

And he’s not completed but…

QUIZ – Brentford Overwhelmed, Isak’s Treble, and Man Utd’s Set-Piece Struggles

Right here’s a number of questions powered by Opta details. Get all of them proper and we’ll ask your boss properly if you happen to can have an additional time off… effectively, no we received’t, nevertheless it ought to nonetheless be enjoyable. Solutions on the backside of the web page.

1. Brentford’s 2-0 dwelling defeat to Nottingham Forest was their first loss on the Gtech Neighborhood Stadium this season. Who had been the final group to beat them there?

2. Alexander Isak’s treble in opposition to Ipswich City was simply the second time a Swedish participant has scored a Premier League hat-trick. Who else managed it?

3. Arsenal (W8 D2) are the primary group to stay unbeaten in Premier League London derbies throughout a full calendar yr since who did so in 2005?

4. Who’re the one group to have conceded extra targets from set-pieces (excl. pens) within the Premier League this season than Manchester United’s 9?

5. Mohamed Salah has each scored and assisted 10+ targets within the Premier League this season (15 targets, 11 assists). With simply 16 video games performed, it’s the joint-quickest by way of appearances by a participant to hit double figures for each in a single marketing campaign within the competitors, tied with who from the 2020-21 season?

Ask Opta

This week’s query comes from Sarah Tomkins, who asks: “Which group has been high of the Premier League on Christmas Day most frequently?”

Do you have got a stats-based soccer query you need to Ask Opta? In that case, ship it to editors@theanalyst.com and we’ll do our greatest to offer you the reply in a future version of SVQ.

Reply:

Nice query Sarah, and never simply because we’ve already written one thing this week taking a look at groups who’ve been high on Christmas Day.

Liverpool will likely be high on 25 December this yr, main the Premier League by 4 factors and with a sport in hand on these under them.

Arsenal had been high at Christmas final season, however after all it was Manchester Metropolis who lifted the Premier League title in Might. In reality, the Gunners have by no means received the Premier League once they’ve been high at Christmas.

Manchester United and Liverpool have been high essentially the most usually within the Premier League period, being the Christmas primary on seven events every. That’s two forward of Chelsea (5) and three forward of Arsenal (4). Man Metropolis have solely been high at Christmas 3 times, so their well-known powers of restoration within the second half of campaigns have usually come in useful.

In whole, there have been 16 events the place the group who had been high on Christmas Day have gone on to win the Premier League title, that means it occurs 50% of the time on common. Liverpool will likely be hoping that turns into 17 this season.

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Quiz Solutions

1. Brentford’s 2-0 dwelling defeat to Nottingham Forest was their first loss on the Gtech Neighborhood Stadium this season. Who had been the final group to beat them there?

Newcastle United (4-2 on the final day of the 2023-24 season)

2. Alexander Isak’s treble in opposition to Ipswich City was simply the second time a Swedish participant has scored a Premier League hat-trick. Who else managed it?

Freddie Ljungberg for Arsenal at Sunderland in Might 2003

3. Arsenal (W8 D2) are the primary group to stay unbeaten in Premier League London derbies throughout a full calendar yr since who did so in 2005?

Chelsea

4. Who’re the one group to have conceded extra targets from set-pieces (excl. pens) within the Premier League this season than Manchester United’s 9?

Wolves (16)

Harry Kane