Analysis: Why are Liverpool struggling to win duels?

With Liverpool suffering back-to-back defeats for the first time this season, Opta Analyst's David Segar looks at why their duel-winning capacity has diminished, and what Arne Slot can do to restore it.

Liverpool have now lost back-to-back matches for the first time under Arne Slot after being defeated by Newcastle United in the EFL Cup final. They lost another battle too, and it was far from the first time in recent weeks.

In his first competitive match in charge of Liverpool, Arne Slot made it clear how important he thinks duels are.

The Dutch coach was unhappy with his team in their goalless first half at Ipswich Town in August 2024, where they had won just 41.5 per cent of their duels against the newly-promoted side.

"I have to give credit to Ipswich, because they were aggressive, they were not afraid, they were playing one-v-one all over the pitch to defend us," Slot said after the match.

"Then it is about winning your duels and winning your second balls. I think they won more than us and that’s why it was absolutely an equal game in the first half."

The Liverpool boss replaced Jarell Quansah with Ibrahima Konate at half-time at Portman Road and his team were more controlling, winning 54.5 per cent of duels after the break and going on to win 2-0.

Slot will be hoping he can figure out how to get his team competing better in duels again soon, though, because their numbers have dipped notably in recent matches.

Given they lead the Premier League by 12 points with nine matches remaining, it would be a little unfair to suggest that Liverpool’s season is unravelling. However, their first back-to-back defeats under Slot have cut their opportunities of success in 2024/25 by two-thirds in the last week.

They were eliminated from the UEFA Champions League by Paris Saint-Germain on penalties after a 1-0 defeat at Anfield on Tuesday, before losing 2-1 to Newcastle in the EFL Cup final on Sunday in a performance that some have described as the worst in a final from Liverpool this century.

Reasons why Liverpool faltered in the final

There are numerous things you could point to as to why things went wrong for the Reds. 

Mohamed Salah was playing in the 10th final of his career and once again failed to score an open-play goal - he now has just one penalty goal to his name in those 10 final appearances for Liverpool and Egypt. Salah failed to make any mark on the match on Sunday; he did not attempt a shot or create a chance in a match in which he played 90-plus minutes for the first time in his Liverpool career.

It would be wildly unfair to blame the man who has 32 goals and 22 assists this season, though. It is perhaps a little concerning that Salah hasn’t scored a non-penalty goal in his last five matches, but others really need to step up.

After Dan Burn and Alexander Isak had given Newcastle a deserved 2-0 lead, none of Liverpool’s main attacking options looked like they would score, and it took forgotten man Federico Chiesa to finally do anything of note with his stoppage-time strike, but it was too little too late for the Reds.

Tiredness has been cited as a factor after Liverpool looked ragged on the giant Wembley pitch. That may well have been the case after they had to play extra-time on Tuesday against PSG, but while Slot clearly has his favourites, he has rotated more than most this season, so it may not be as simple as saying Liverpool’s players are reaching the point of burnout.

The EFL Cup final was Liverpool’s 47th match in all competitions this season, with eight players featuring in at least 40 of those. In the Premier League, only Nottingham Forest (23) have used fewer players than Liverpool in 2024/25 (24, level with Arsenal and Newcastle).

However, in all competitions this season, only four Premier League teams - Chelsea (7.2), Ipswich (4.4), Manchester City (4.3) and Tottenham Hotspur (4.3) - have averaged more than Liverpool’s 3.9 changes to the starting XI per match in all competitions. It should be noted that Chelsea’s high average is primarily due to their UEFA Conference League campaign, where they’ve played a number of fringe players.

Most changes to starting XI per match (all competitions)

That rotation has slowed in recent weeks, though, and nine of Liverpool’s 10 outfield players who started the EFL Cup final also started both legs against PSG. That continuity would perhaps have made sense if they’d played better against Luis Enrique’s side, or even just sneaked through, but when the team was announced on Sunday it wasn’t overly surprising that Liverpool looked lacking in energy and belief for much of the contest.

Newcastle had aerial ascendancy

In truth, Liverpool were bullied by Newcastle and – as Slot acknowledged after the match – one area where the difference between the two teams was especially noticeable came in contesting duels. A duel is defined as a 50-50 contest between two players of opposing sides in the match. For every duel won, there is a corresponding duel lost depending on the outcome of the contest.

Disagreeing with the notion that tiredness in his players was to blame, Slot said: "This game had nothing to do with running, it had only to do with playing duels… This game went exactly the way [Newcastle] wanted it to, a fight with a lot of duels and a lot of duels in the air.

"If we play 10 games of football through the air against them, they win it probably nine times because they are a stronger team through the air than us."

Newcastle won 57.3 per cent of duels (51/89), and 68.0 per cent of aerial duels (17/25) in the final. Curiously, Liverpool actually bettered Newcastle in duel success in their Premier League meeting at Anfield only last month, winning 55.2 per cent of total duels (53/96) and 64.3 per cent of aerial duels (9/14), though the visitors were without key midfielder Joelinton that night, who as we’ll get to, rose to the occasion at Wembley.

Duels can be a tricky metric to analyse. For example, AFC Bournemouth have the worst duel success percentage in the Premier League this season (47.6 per cent), but could very well end up qualifying for the Champions League. Crystal Palace have the lowest aerial duel success (45.0 per cent) but in recent weeks they have been one of the strongest performing teams in England’s top flight.

However, in Liverpool’s case, their record in duels has often mirrored their overall success in recent seasons. The last time they averaged more than a 50.0 per cent duel success rate in a Premier League season was in 2019/20 when they won the title (50.6 per cent).

They had the worst duel success rate in the Premier League in 2022/23 (47.5 per cent) when they finished fifth. That was part of the reason they almost entirely refreshed their midfield the following summer.

It worked to an extent in 2023/24 as their percentage rose to 48.9 per cent, though there were still only four teams with a worse average in the Premier League as they ultimately fell out of the title race to finish third in Jurgen Klopp’s final season at Anfield.

Liverpool's duels declining in 2025

With Slot at the helm, Liverpool seemed to be doing better in duels, and at the turn of the year, had the sixth best success rate in the league (51.2 per cent). However, since the new year they have the fourth worst (48.0 per cent). With their current rate of just under 50.0 per cent, they very easily could finish over that marker for the first time in five years, but they will need to arrest their recent slide.

We analysed prior to the final that the midfield battle would be a key factor in the match, and so it proved. Joelinton and Bruno Guimaraes won nine duels each from 13 and 14 attempts respectively, while no Liverpool midfielder won more than three.

In fact, of all 16 players who featured for Liverpool at Wembley, only Konate (3/4), Salah (2/3) and substitute Chiesa (4/4) won more than 50 per cent of their duels.

Given the relatively small number of duels that can take place in a match, losing a handful can make a big difference to percentages, but what should be concerning for Liverpool is that losing out in most of their duels is becoming a growing trend.

Of their six least successful matches for duels this season, three have come since the start of March, including an astonishingly low 32.5 per cent (27/83) success rate in their Champions League last-16 first-leg win at PSG. February's unconvincing Premier League home win over Wolves also features in their lowest 10, listed below. 

Liverpool's lowest duel success percentages 24/25 (all competitions)

In total this season, Liverpool have only won more than 50 per cent of their duels in 15 of their 47 matches, and have only done so three times in their last 17 matches in all competitions.

Duel numbers also include aerial duels, where Liverpool have actually been quite good this campaign, largely thanks to the dominance of Virgil van Dijk and Konate. In fact, they have the highest percentage of successful aerial duels in the Premier League (54.9 per cent). As mentioned, it was an area where they struggled on Sunday, though, winning just 32.0 per cent against Newcastle (8/25).

That was in part due to the Magpies’ clever corner routines that saw the very tall Burn move away from the middle of the penalty area where Van Dijk and Konate were, instead only having to beat the diminutive figure of Alexis Mac Allister in the air, which he did with ease, especially for the opening goal of the match.

Grounds for concern

Not every team will be made up of as many giants as Newcastle, though, and so as far as improvements in duels go, it is ground duels where Liverpool could do with bettering their numbers.

Across their first 37 matches in all competitions this season, Liverpool won 48.4 per cent of their ground duels; that’s not an amazing figure but it’s close enough to 50.0 per cent to not have them necessarily be a deciding factor in matches.

However, in their last 10 matches, they have won just 44.4 per cent of ground duels.

This could simply be a result of becoming more of a target. At the start of the season, before anyone knew how good Liverpool would be under their new boss, perhaps opponents weren’t as ready for them. Since their domination of the Premier League and impressive performance in the league phase of the Champions League, teams know Liverpool are a force to be reckoned with, and that extra efforts must be made against them.

Gravenberch still grafting but needs help

Ryan Gravenberch has been a surprise success story in a deep midfield role this season, and earlier in the campaign one of his biggest strengths was his success in duels. As of 3 December, the Dutchman had the second-best duel success of Premier League central midfielders with 64.7 per cent (min. five appearances). However, he has won just 51.2 per cent since then, only just inside the top 50 central midfielders in the division in that time.

His overall percentage in all competitions of 56.8 per cent is still well above regular midfield partners Curtis Jones (47.9 per cent), Mac Allister (46.3 per cent) and Dominik Szoboszlai (45.3 per cent), so perhaps on occasion Gravenberch could do with more help in that area, with regular late substitute Wataru Endo on 55.9 per cent.

It should also be noted that with nine matches remaining, Gravenberch has already played 3,515 minutes for his club this season, almost twice as many as he did in the whole of last season (1,847), and almost four times as many as the season before at Bayern Munich (938). Only in the 2020/21 campaign, at Ajax has he played more minutes in a single season (3,949).

Ending the season with ‘only’ the Premier League title to show for it will still make this one of Liverpool’s best campaigns in modern times, but they can’t afford to sleepwalk to the end of it.

There were elements of bad luck about the PSG defeat, but essentially it has been two hugely important matches in a week where Liverpool’s opponents have looked more energetic and determined.

The international break may have come at an ideal time for Liverpool, and they must right the ship when club football returns in early April. After all, there is still work to do to seal the title.

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