The Week in Stats: The sins of Hugo Lloris

We take a look at injury-time goals, Hugo Lloris’ errors and the best opening periods in the Premier League this season.

The error of his ways

Hugo Lloris’ last-minute mistake against Liverpool on Sunday has dominated headlines and social media in recent days, so this seems a good time to delve into just how error-prone the Spurs goalkeeper is.

If we start by identifying the keepers who’ve committed the highest total number of errors in Europe’s big four leagues this season, then things don’t look too good for Lloris.

What’s very conspicuous here, of course is that one of the two keepers to have made even more errors than Lloris is his opposite number on Sunday, Alisson. This might seem a little surprising, given that the dominant narrative at the moment is that the Brazilian is the final piece in the Liverpool jigsaw, while Tottenham’s number 1 is apparently a liability.

Moreover, Lloris has only missed four league games all term, so it’s only fair to look at how this levels out in terms of errors per 90 minutes played.

Taking into account all 140 goalkeepers who’ve appeared in the top four leagues this season, the one with the very worst errors-per-90 average is another who fell prey to Anfield’s curse of the visiting keeper, namely Crystal Palace’s Julian Speroni.

If we narrow down our search to the 83 keepers who’ve played 1,000 or more minutes in those leagues, though, then Lloris again makes the top 10.

It’s worth noting that half of the players on the above list have been dropped at least temporarily this season.

The Premier League in particular seems to be a hotbed of goalkeeper blunders. There have been 70 in all in England so far, whereas none of the other three leagues have witnessed more than 42. That’s quite a gap. And of the eight keepers in Europe’s big four leagues who’ve committed five or more errors, more than half play in England.

This doesn’t appear to be a new development, either – for Lloris or the Premier League – as last season’s figures demonstrate.

However, in Lloris’ defense the mistake against Liverpool on Sunday was the first of his errors in the league to lead to a goal during the current campaign. And if we look at errors-leading-to-a-goal-per-90 figures for the keepers who’ve played a minimum of 1,000 minutes, then it turns out that the Spurs captain is exactly middling.

Precisely 40 of Lloris’ peers have made more such errors per 90, and 40 have made fewer. He’s currently level with Real Betis’ Pau Lopez and Neto of Valencia on 0.037 p90.

Of course, that perhaps isn’t great for a club that has aspirations of winning the Premier League and Champions League, but it’s still far from disastrous.

Next week, we’ll move on to look at save percentages, which is a metric in which Lloris fares far better.

The late, late show

That last-minute goal on Sunday certainly wasn’t the first time that Liverpool have left it late this season, with Divock Origi’s injury-time winner against Everton in December being at least as dramatic and surreal.

While we’ve previously examined which teams have been especially strong and weak in the final 15 minutes of games, we haven’t yet looked at injury-time goals.

And it turns out that only one side in the big four leagues has scored more often than Liverpool have in injury time this term.

As with goalkeeper errors, injury-time goals seem to have been something of a Premier League specialty over the past couple of years.

Opening question

During his interview with the BBC following Manchester City’s 2-0 win over Fulham on Saturday, manager Pep Guardiola gushed that “the first 15-20 minutes was incredible with the way we played.”

While City were indeed impressive, in expected goals terms the 0.841 xG that they managed in the opening 20 minutes was far from the best by a Premier League side this season, although perhaps inevitably that accolade does belong to Guardiola’s team.

The performance in question came in City’s 5-0 win over Burnley in October, which just edges out Liverpool’s opening period in their first league game of the season, against West Ham at Anfield. City have four of the seven highest totals to date.

Those first 20 minutes against Fulham on Saturday weren’t even the best by an away side. That display did come from Manchester City, however, during their visit to the London Stadium at the end of November.

At the other end of the spectrum, there have been 95 instances of a team not managing a shot in the opening 20 minutes of a Premier League game this term.