Replacing Jürgen Klopp: Managing a Heavyweight

The second instalment of a five-part series dedicated to finding a successor to Jürgen Klopp using data

So in the first post of this series, I outlined the background behind Liverpool’s search for a new manager and why the process is complicated to say the least for a whole host of reasons.

In this post, I’m going to get into the details behind the sort of playing style that I think should be targeted. Don’t forget, from a data perspective, we’re essentially recruiting a style of play as opposed to recruiting a manager.

So what does an optimal playing style for a favourite like Liverpool look like? To determine the answer, we need to strip the sport down to the bare bones, almost like going back to school.

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In possession, football is about scoring goals. Who knew? To score goals, you need to generate shots, ideally from healthy locations. To generate shots from healthy locations, you need to be reaching the penalty box often. To reach the penalty box often, you need to progress the ball through the thirds of the pitch from deeper areas.

Thus, in elementary terms, a team that is good in possession is good at all of those things. The players as individuals have a massive impact on the finishing part, so we can almost overlook goals as a metric, but progressive passes, passes into the penalty box, shots and expected goals are all going to be on the agenda as we determine which managers are good at coaching their teams to attack.