As Arne Slot‘s side beat Accrington Stanley 4-0 and young Rio Ngumoha broke an all-time Liverpool record, Kostas Tsimikas and Trent Alexander-Arnold stepped up to provide much of the Reds’ creative output.
While he has already featured on the bench for one game this season, away at Southampton in the League Cup, it came as a surprise when Ngumoha was named in Liverpool’s FA Cup third round starting XI.
Having signed from Chelsea in the summer, he has frequently trained with the first team and was awarded his first Reds appearance on Saturday, aged just 16 years and 135 days old.
This made him Liverpool’s youngest starter of all time, beating Harvey Elliott who made his first start at 16 years, five months and 22 days old.
Ngumoha didn’t, however, take the crown of youngest Liverpool player ever. That title belongs to Jerome Sinclair who, aged 16 years and six days, played nine minutes in a 2-1 League Cup win against West Brom in 2012.
Despite his lack of years, Ngumoha made a significant impact on the game against Accrington Stanley.
Playing on the left wing, he managed more successful dribbles (3/7) than any of his teammates on the day, according to FotMob.
It wasn’t Ngumoha, though, who was Liverpool’s main creative outlet in the match.
Kostas Tsimikas & Trent Alexander-Arnold’s influence
It was Liverpool’s full-backs at Anfield who provided most of the opportunities for Slot’s attackers.
Under Jurgen Klopp, the Reds became known for their flying full-backs, Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson, who would rack up more assists than anyone else in the Premier League.
Slot, though, tends to place more of a reliance on his midfielders to feed his forwards.
On Saturday, Liverpool’s full-backs had arguably the biggest influence of anyone on the pitch, with Alexander-Arnold scoring and Tsimikas’ stats standing out.
Only Jarell Quansah and Wataru Endo had more touches than the Greece international, and Tsimikas created more chances (4) than any other player on the pitch.
Three of his nine crosses were described as accurate by FotMob.
While the his overlapping runs past Ngumoha were often the source of the left-back’s influence, Alexander-Arnold created from deeper.
The right-back played 20 passes into the final third, 12 more than Liverpool’s second-best in that regard, Tsimikas.
He also created two chances and netted a fantastic goal, scoring past goalkeeper Billy Crellin from 25 yards out, striking so cleanly that the ball hardly spun in the air on its way towards the Anfield Road End.
Federico Chiesa’s search for a goal
While he didn’t start, Federico Chiesa still came away from Anfield satisfied with arguably his best showing of the season having come on at half time and scored.
The Italian, who had only played 123 minutes before Saturday’s FA Cup tie, came on at the break intent on making an impact.
With Accrington Stanley behind, tiring and beginning to leave spaces, he was able to exploit that and scored his first Liverpool goal with an excellent, accurate shot from outside the box.
This was far from his first effort at goal. In fact, Chiesa had more shots (6) than anyone else three of which were on target. By comparison, Nunez had five shots across the full 90 minutes.
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