17 shots, none on target: how Arsenal shut Liverpool out at Anfield
Arsenal won 1-0 at Anfield on Sunday. Kai Havertz scored after 16 minutes, and Arsenal went three points clear at the top of the Premier League.
The number everyone shared afterwards was 0.00 xGOT. Liverpool had 17 shots and not one of them hit the target. Arsenal's goalkeeper, David Raya, did not have to make a save. It was the first time on record that Liverpool failed to put a shot on target in a home league game.
A number like that is easy to share and easy to misread. It sounds like Liverpool created nothing. The data says something more interesting: Liverpool got into the box, created about as much as Arsenal did, and still had nothing land on the goal, because Arsenal had a player in front of almost every shot. I went through all 17 to see how.
What 0.00 xGOT means
xG (expected goals) rates every shot by how likely it was to score, based on thousands of similar shots: where it was taken from, the angle, whether it was a header, and so on. A shot worth 0.10 xG goes in about one time in ten.
xGOT (expected goals on target) only counts shots that are on target, and rates them by where they were going: a shot into the top corner scores higher than one straight at the goalkeeper. If a team has no shots on target, its xGOT is zero, whatever else happened.
