Post Match Report - Community Shield

Celebrating Information - on Liverpool's New Team

Fixture: Liverpool 2 - 2 Crystal Palace (Palace 3-2 on penalties)

Arena: Wembley Stadium, London

Date: 8/10/25

Buzz: One Shield or a Bunch of Cups?

MOTM: Alisson

In a minute here, I’m going to show you the amount of touches each one of Liverpool’s starting 11 had in the Community Shield against Crystal Palace. Reckon you can guess without looking? Go ahead, pull out a notepad and see if you can rank 1 - 11 in terms of most touches to fewest.

While you think about it, I’ll do my due diligence. Credit to Crystal Palace for their second trophy win of all time. I’m so, so very happy for them.

Palace will benefit more from winning than Liverpool will get dented from losing. Indeed the lad that scored their winning penalty will have more good come from it than the negatives Salah will endure from missing his. Good for them. Bad for Bournemouth.

There’s your bit of Charity, as it was once known.

Got your touch list yet? It’s a fun way to glance at how Liverpool plan to play this season. It doesn’t indicate form, skill, or the ability to get yourself into the match as such… rather it’s a heatmap for the ball. The touches form a pathway, like when you can see an animal trail through tall grass. Or when water melts down a mountain.

Here’s that flow:

How’d you do? Some surprises in there for me for sure, especially going into the match.

We need something to compare it to. Here’s the touch list from Liverpool’s 1-1 draw with Crystal Palace on the last game of last season - an equally competitive, yet inconsequential match.

Plenty stands out from this information. You can see similarities in build up from season to season, things like playing through Virgil and the left back. That’s why their touches are higher - they stay further back so it’s easier to get them the ball.

In both teams you have a #6 playing in a triangle with Virgil and the left back. You can see the right back’s position in both teams - higher up, fewer touches, riskier positions, quicker opposing pressure. While Alexander-Arnold and Jeremie Frimpong are very different players, their output positions don’t feel too different going into the season.

You can see a similar amount of touches between Ekitike and Diaz, suggesting Diaz was trying his best to fit into a mold at center forward that Slot just didn’t have the personnel for.

Ekitike looked hand in glove today. He has that Daniel Sturridge ability to make tight, clever runs while our line is pushed past midway. He has the flicks and tricks to keep possession in those areas, and in this way he is the polar opposite of the striker who just left.

Darwin Nunez needs to gallop, Hugo Ekitike prefers to prance. To extend the metaphor further - we just traded a horse for a deer. Traded up imo.

On the differences between the touch lists, two players stand out. Szoboszlai and Salah.

On Szoboszlai - I don’t want him to have that many touches. He’s much more dangerous in that 45-55 touch range where he’s touch touch SHOOT instead of touch touch pass touch pass touch pass. You saw his true game as soon as Mac Allister / Endo came on and he was able to play higher.

And what are you doing when you’re not getting touches? You’re running. Szoboszlai is better at running than anyone in the world. In deeper positions (where he gets 75+ touches) he lingers on the ball a bit and can’t break lines as often with his motor.

When Gravenberch is back, a lot of this will be different.

Less easy to understand, potentially, are Salah’s touches. The last game I can remember that felt like this was the League Cup Final against Newcastle, where he had just 23 touches. Today in the Community Shield he had 26, second only to Ekitike amongst Liverpool players.

But why? Did Salah play poorly? Did Palace do us? Does he choke in finals? is he old now? Has the team moved past him already?

The answer to those questions is no, of course. Well… there might be a nugget of truth to the last one.

Against Newcastle in the League Cup Final we didn’t have enough energy, full stop. We certainly didn’t have enough threat from the other two forward positions, which meant Newcastle could commit fully to their plan to defend Salah. Dan Burn disrupts the long ball to Salah while Livramento blocks the passing lanes to him on the deck.

Crystal Palace can do a very similar thing, with Guehi and Mitchell able to stay back on Salah as Muniz, their preferred out ball on the other side, marauds forward. They set up pretty well against us actually.

That is, if all touches lead to Salah.

But maybe they don’t anymore. Maybe they shouldn’t.

Florian Wirtz may be the long term replacement for Salah at Liverpool, quality wise, but his influence on the football pitch is immediate. He is irresistible. It’s like if the ball was married to Salah and then Wirtz, the ball’s high school sweetheart moved in next door.

That’s the one that got away, thinks Ball. Salah sees them in the moonlight through his kitchen window, lingering at the garbage bins. Suddenly he’s playing bridge over there most nights.

He’s just a really good friend, honey.

Maybe I shouldn’t be knighting a 22-year-old yet. And there will be plenty of games this season where Mo Salah gets 40, 50, even 60 touches. Where he’s the main dude. But Florian Wirtz attracts ball like no one I’ve ever seen in a Liverpool shirt. Whether he plays well or not, he’s going to hoover up touches.

And it’s excellent news. There’s something so lethal about Mo Salah hiding over there, savoring his touches like one of his perfectly refined, breadless meals. Never an inefficient calorie. Tiny espresso sips.

Salah not having enough touches only matters when he’s 80% of our goals and assists. He won’t be that this season. And that’s better for Liverpool.

Thank you for your service, Mo Salah. Enjoy your private table on the wing. Let us serve you for a bit.