“The 91st Minute” is a column by Sam Reno about professional soccer.
Just one year after dominating the Premier League, Liverpool has fallen to eighth in the table and 23 points off the top. It has lost six consecutive matches at home for the first time in club history, with the likes of Burnley and Fulham even taking three points off the defending champs at Anfield.
As this poor run of form has snowballed, many fans and pundits alike have thrown around the phrase “worst title defense ever.” While it seems like an overreaction on the face of it, let’s take a deeper look into some of the worst title defenses ever, and how Liverpool stacks up against them this season.
If everyone continues winning at the exact same rate for the rest of the season, which is definitely a bold assumption, Liverpool would finish in ninth with 58 points, 30 points behind Manchester City who are projected to win the league with 88 points.
Using Liverpool’s projected position in the table, points and points out of first for this season, we can draw comparisons to other poor champions in the Premier League’s history.
The defending Premier League champion has finished fifth or worse only five times in the history of the league. However, Liverpool are on pace to finish much worse than that in ninth. Only two clubs have ever finished ninth or worse in a title-defense season: 2015-16 Chelsea in 10th and 2016-17 Leicester City in 12th.
Premier League defending champions have finished with a mean of 78 points with a standard deviation of 12 points. The two clubs that have finished roughly one standard deviation below that mean are 1994-95 Blackburn and 2012-13 Manchester United. Liverpool, however, are on pace to finish almost two standard deviations below that average on 58 points this season, something only seen by, once again, 2015-16 Chelsea and 2016-17 Leicester City.
Lastly, defending Premier League champions have finished, on average, nine points out of first with a standard deviation of 12 points. The breakdown looks very similar, with 1994-94 Blackburn and 2012-13 Manchester United finishing just outside of one deviation below. Liverpool, projected 30 points out, would sit roughly two deviations below that mean of 12 alongside 2015-16 Chelsea and 2016-17 Leicester City.
We can clearly see that only two teams, 2015-16 Chelsea and 2016-17 Leicester City, performed poorly enough in their title defense to hit the qualifiers for position, points and points out of first. So how does Liverpool stack up with the worst defending champs in the history of the league?
First, both those Chelsea and Leicester City teams finished lower in the table, earned fewer points and finished further from the top than Liverpool is on pace for. Liverpool also spent a significant portion of the early and middle portion of the season in first which can be said of either Chelsea or Leicester City.
Chelsea, however, rebounded from that tenth-place finish in 2016-17 to win the league the next season with 93 points which, at the time, was the second-highest total in league history. While we do not have that level of context for this Liverpool side yet, it does lessen the disappointment of that Chelsea title defense.
Leicester City’s title in 2016-17 was as unexpected as they come. After narrowly escaping relegation in the season prior, its relegation odds were set at 7-1 while their title odds were placed at 5000-1 heading into the season.
It is unsurprising, though, that Leicester would struggle to replicate that unexpected season. Liverpool, however, are one of the biggest clubs in world football and have finished with 97 and 99 points, a UCL title and a Premier League title in the last two seasons. Not exactly the resumé you would expect from a fourth place finisher.
Of course, the Reds are not immune to struggles of their own. Ravaged by injuries, most notably the torn ACL suffered by 2019 Ballon d’Or runner-up and starting CB Virgil Van Dijk, the club has been forced to start more than 18 different CB pairings this season. This defensive uncertainty has sent ripples through the rest of the club, as the back-line inconsistency has lessened its ability to effectively utilize the high press to create more scoring chances.
Manager Jurgen Klopp and starting goalkeeper Alisson Becker have both dealt with personal tragedy this season. This emotional toll is impossible to overstate, especially in a time as challenging as the present, and any impact it may have on the pitch is most certainly excusable.
So are Liverpool the worst defending champions in Premier League history? Maybe.
There are still ten league games remaining, however, for the defending champs to change the narrative. They are easily within striking distance of a top four finish which would keep them in Champions League play for next season. They have also just beaten RB Leipzig 4-0 on aggregate to advance to the quarterfinals of this season’s Champions League, so the book has certainly not closed on 2020-21 Liverpool FC.
“The 91st Minute” runs every Wednesday.