Liverpool were crowned Premier League champions in May 2025, in new manager Arne Slot’s first season as the reds boss. Football fans will tell you they won the title because they were the best team in the league and played the best football, which of course is true, but there is much more to it than that. Data can paint a detailed picture of the reasons for success and failure, better helping to understand just how it happened. 

It is often believed that experience is the key to success in football, with data from the CIES Sports Laboratory finding the median age of champions across Europe’s top five leagues between 2009 and 2017 was approximately 26.5 years old. During last season, Liverpool had the 5th oldest squad in the Premier League with an average age of 27.2. Despite not having the outright oldest squad in the league, it does show that there is a correlation between experience and success. 

Fine margins are perhaps what define football so much today, with just one goal over the course of the season potentially leading to continental qualification, winning the title or relegation. Penalties are just one facet that can contribute to these fine margins, and Liverpool converted the most in the league last season. The average total of penalties scored throughout the Premier League season was 3.45, but Liverpool scored 9, blowing the average out of the water. 

Historically, teams that are successful have a core group of players that have been at the same club for a similar amount of time. Despite the arrival of a new manager in the summer of 2024, which usually leads to inflated investment to accommodate transfers, the club only had one arrival during that transfer window (Federico Chiesa). This figure was the lowest in the league, with the Merseyside club also being joint 2nd in least departures from the last season. The squad was essentially identical from the previous season, highlighting the demand for a settled group to have success. 

A possession-based style of football has become increasingly prevalent in recent years. Pep Guardiola, who originally inherited his style off the great Johan Cruyff, often referred to as the father of football, has experienced amazing success with his approach to football. Intricate tactics now dominate football, with the previous manager of Liverpool, Jürgen Klopp, adopting a rather contrasting style to Pep that involved high pressing and stretching the play using counter attacks. Arne Slot adopted a calmer and more controlled style last season, with a larger emphasis on retaining possession throughout phases of the game. Winning the Premier League last season, this highlighted that possession is vital to success, as Klopp’s similar team in the previous years did not achieve that kind of success so effectively. 

Expected goals (xG) has come around only in the last few years, which assigns a probability, between 0 and 1, to every shot, indicating how likely it is to be a goal based on factors like distance, angle, and whether it was a big chance or a one-on-one situation. Rather than just analysing the amount of goals Liverpool scored, using xG takes out the striker error element. A combination of xG and possession highlights how effective a team is, painting a picture of what makes a team click. 

Liverpool ultimately achieved success through a solid base built by Jürgen Klopp over the 9 years he was at the club, but also due to the differing approach Slot adopted that utilised the players in the squad more effectively. They also had experienced players, such as Virgil Van Dijk, Mo Salah, Andrew Robertson, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Alisson Becker, who had all experienced domestic and continental success at the club under the previous manager. However, credit should not be taken away from Slot, as his adaptation to the league occurred much more expeditiously than other managers usually do.

By Finn Littlewood | 19th November 2025