Liverpool have leapfrogged Man City partially thanks to an ability to cope more efficiently with resistance threats, but the Reds are going to face the most dangerous player in Europe.
No sooner has the dust settled after Alisson’s length-of-the-pitch gallop to celebrate Mohamed Salah’s goal against Man United, compared to the Premier League is back and Liverpool face a potentially tricky trip to Wolves.
It had been less than a month ago that Jurgen Klopp and his staff needed to work out Wolves at Anfield, emerging with a 1-0 triumph in the center of a busy festive period.
After this defeat, Wolves went on a streak of four matches without winning, but over the weekend that they handled an impressive comeback win in Southampton, and enter this second meeting with Liverpool on a top.
It might be argued that the West Midlands club have one of the most dangerous players in the league out of Liverpool.
Adama Traore is the ideal carrier of a soccer since they began collecting stats for all these things.
This season in the Premier League he averages 5.7 successful dribbles per game, and just one other player has attempted more than his 126 successful dribbles in complete –more on that participant afterwards.
In total, he’s tried 169 take-ons giving him a success rate of 75 percent, which, particularly given the sheer amount, is an almost incredible number.
To take this beyond the Premier League for a second for a circumstance, Lionel Messi–soccer’s benchmark–has been successful with 79 of his 107 attempted dribbles giving him a success rate of 74 percent, and averages 5.3 take-ons per match.
Liverpool’s opposition analysts might have thought of a strategy to prevent Traore, and previously Virgil van Dijk continues to be one of few players able to keep up with the Spanish speedster.
But it would not be a surprise to see Traore leave a variety of Liverpool players in his wake in the upcoming match at Molineux.
The 23-year-old is a great deal more settled this year and has done what every resistance team dreaded: he has added an end product to this dribbling fun.
Liverpool have Traore to thank for six points that the defending champions have dropped this year, but on Thursday, they will be expecting Wolves to rotate their lineup leaving him on the seat, as was the situation in Anfield.
