Well it really is purely just looking at one stat: shot stopping (and only over half a season, I've been talking about a full season just to make it clear it's over a lot of games, not individual ones). Look where Lehman is on there, bottom half...guess who was goalkeeper in their team of the season at the end of last year? In fact, guess who was their player of the season overall? Lehman.
In fact, here's their team of the season:
Lehman
Terry
Ferdinand
Toure
Stelios
Lampard
Gerrard
Ronaldo
Bent
Henry
Van Nistelrooy
Don't know why they chose a 3-4-3, no one plays that anymore, but there's not much to complain about all the same. That's because it looks at overall stats, not individual ones like the shot stopping, which is just interesting, not meant to show the whole picture.
You could of course look at individual stats for these players and others and try and find problems, but you'd have to dismiss the overall view for that. For example, Xabi Alonso is the best passer in the Premiership (just ahead of Lampard) and Michael Carrick had the best passing single game of the season (against Liverpool, interestingly enough). You could argue that one of those two should be in there, looking at just those.
Keeping on passing, aside from shots on target, good passing in the opposition half has the biggest sway on results. Surprisingly, shots off target and number of corners have virtually no effect on the outcome of a game (or maybe not surprising, given how freely Arsenal score despite being next to useless from corners). Same goes for free kicks given away or gained (though yellow cards do have an effect). Possession matters, but only half as much as a successful pass rate in the oposition's half.
And the stats tell us that, in midfield, Liverpool have 3 of the best passers in the game. Alonso, Gerrard and Sissoko are not only good at passing, they're consistently good at passing. Compare this to Chelsea and only Lampard is a consistently good passer, with Makelele and Essien both good passers, but inconsistent. You can begin to see why Liverpool have overrun Chelsea's midfield in recent games, despite Chelsea supposedly having an unbeatable midfield.
Again, this comes back to the point about not only looking at one stat for seeing how a team will do against another, but everything in combination. While it's true that consistently good passing in the opposition half is the second best stat for looking how results are swayed, it's absolute MILE behind the best sway, shots on target. So we can't say Liverpool should be beating Chelsea, as their strikeforce for the last couple of years has been terrible. And while you could argue Chelsea's hassn't been as good as it could be, they have midfielders who are shooting crazy.
Interestingly, Benitez may be making some mistakes with his team next year. He's got a striker who shoots on target a lot, which is excellent (and Fowler is another who will help, just didn't have enough games to last year), but he's after a right sided midfielder. Now if he intends to stick with a 4-4-2, that means dropping one of Sissoko, Gerrard and Alonso. You could stay he'd be better sticking with Gerrard on the right wing and concentrating on bringing in another striker.
