Luis Diaz’s first half summed up that of Liverpool as a whole against Luton on Wednesday night, with the 27-year-old having plenty of opportunities coming his way but unable to make any of them count before the interval.
The Colombian took six shots in the opening 45 minutes, but only one of those was on target (Sofascore), and among those which didn’t work Thomas Kaminski was a 35th-minute effort which whistled narrowly over the crossbar.
It prompted Zinny Boswell to share an astonishing statistic on Sky Sports’ live web commentary (20:05), informing us: “That’s Luis Diaz’s sixth shot of the game. He’s only hit the target once. His xG for the evening is 0.67, compared to Luton’s 0.68.”
Diaz’s first half was a combination of close misses and wastefulness, with one early chance at 0-0 a particular let-off for Luton.
On a night that Mo Salah, Diogo Jota and Darwin Nunez are unavailable, Liverpool need the Colombian – and indeed his teammates – to produce a few moments of quality which’ll find a way past Kaminski and turn around a worrying situation for the Reds.
There’s still plenty of time to do so at the time of writing, but we’d all like to see the visitors’ net bulging sooner rather than later.
#Ep102 of The Empire of the Kop Podcast: EOTK Insider with Neil Jones🎙️