So the first chance anyone has of overtaking us on this since game-week 3 is Arsenal on game-week 35 whilst City would in the last midweek. That gives me a bit of confidence back looking at previous years graphs. The anomaly is City’s run in 18/19 to overtake us which Arsenal would have to match and I still don’t believe they are as good as either of us were that season.
I was of a similar opinion to you on Arsenal.
However, if you overlay their xG data to both ours and Man City's over a similar time frame in that season and in fact Arsenal's form is actually as good
if not better in some regards.Just to be clear, Man City's finish to that season was winning 18 of 19 games in the final half of the season, so if you go back to the start of that run and do a similar comparison to Arsenal's run at that same point this season you get the following data...
18/19
Man City - xG 30.54 / xGA 7.54
Liverpool - xG 28.46 / xGA 8.67
23/24
Arsenal - xG 28.11 / xGA 6.61
Liverpool - xG 36.09 / xGA 13.16
Man City - xG 28.13 / 12.91
Arsenal's defensive numbers are superior to both ours and City's in 18/19, while their expected goals number isn't that far off either of ours or City's. I'd argue in an aggregate sense they are on par given they are giving up less expected goals which in turn means scoring less - that is generally the nature of things.
As a side note, when you look at our numbers this season the burning question has to be, why can't we find more balance in our play between scoring a bit less and conceding a bit less? I'm sure that's easier said than done, or Klopp would be doing it. To quote the Godfather ..."this is the business (style) we've chosen"
Something that occurred to me during this analysis was what about comparing Arsenal to our best season when we actually won the title, controlled games like a boss and blew the competition away. Well across a similar period our numbers looked as follows...
19/20
Liverpool - xG 26.62 / xGA 12.12
So in actuality this season hasn't been all that dissimilar to our title winning season in terms of goals against, but miles ahead in terms of the chances we are creating. By way of comparison we are creating even more chances this season than City were last season during the same period and that team went on to win the treble.
Caveat - Yes I'm aware of the deficiencies and flaws of xG and am not arguing that any of the above data can accurately predict the future. However, if the question is are Arsenal as good as the 18/19 version of Liverpool or Man City then in a xG sense the answer so far is yes.
Draw your own conclusions.
