Liverpool’s charge towards a potential 19th league championship continued with a 2-1 victory over Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park on Saturday. It was the sixth time the Reds have won by this scoreline already this season, just one short of the club’s Premier League era record.

When compared to the previous five 2-1s, this was perhaps most like the win over Leicester City. Liverpool opened the scoring through Sadio Mané close to half time, before being pegged back in the final 10 minutes but still ultimately getting over the line.

It was also similar to the Southampton match, in that Mané and Roberto Firmino provided the goals, and also the Chelsea game, as the opposition had a goal chalked off by a man in a room at Stockley Park.

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Perhaps the most relevant comparison to make is with other games which have directly followed an international break. For the eighth time in the last nine such fixtures, the Reds emerged with three points. And as with many of those matches, Liverpool played at a level below their best.

Jürgen Klopp’s team dominated possession to the tune of 60 percent, and attempted the same proportion of the final third passes too. However, the home team were the more efficient when it came to getting the ball into the box.

Palace had 26 touches in the Liverpool box, the most any team who aren’t the current league champions have had against the Reds in the league this season. They also completed 11 passes in the penalty area, which is the most by any opponent and over double the five per game average which had previously occurred in 2019/20.

Nineteen percent of the Eagles’ successful final third passes ended in the Liverpool box, when no team had a higher proportion than 14 percent prior to this match. You get the idea. Fortunately for Liverpool, Roy Hodgson’s side were mostly wasteful once inside the penalty area.

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The battle of the two boxes followed a similar pattern to many of the Reds’ recent matches. Both teams had (at least) two clear-cut chances for the seventh Liverpool game in a row, and as has tended to happen, the Reds were more clinical with their opportunities.

Where Jordan Ayew and Wilfried Zaha failed to test Alisson with Palace’s best chances, Roberto Firmino forced a save out of Vicente Guaita in the 64th minute, before scoring the winner 20 minutes later.

Of course, Palace fans might argue that their best chance was on target, put in the net, and should have stood. The Eagles are not the first team to see a goal ruled out at 0-0 and go on to lose either; it has also happened to Brighton and Sheffield United this season.

Having written last week that Liverpool had taken more shots on target than their opponents in every league match this season, Palace naturally ended that run at the earliest available opportunity.

But five of their six on target attempts were from well outside the penalty box, so were unlikely to prove too costly. According to Understat, none of Palace’s five long range on target efforts had a better than one in 50 chance of going in.

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Liverpool scored in the 49th minute through Mané, just as they did in this fixture in 2017/18. It was the sixth time this season the former Saint has scored the Reds’ first goal in a game, when nobody else has done so more than twice (and, surprisingly, Firmino and Mohamed Salah haven’t done it at all).

Mané might lead the way in scoring Liverpool’s opening goals, but it’s Firmino who has now provided the decisive strike in three of the six 2-1 victories. The Reds’ number nine scored the club’s sixth league goal of the campaign which has come in the final 15 minutes of matches, and Bobby is the only player with more than one to his name.

It would be natural to think Liverpool are scoring loads of late goals, yet Manchester City, Leicester and Wolves have all scored more from the 76th minute onwards in 2019/20. They’ve made up 20 percent of the club’s total goals this season, but that’s below the league average of 23 percent.

But rarely have six late goals counted for so much. Liverpool scored 25 in the closing 15 minutes of matches last season, their second highest tally in the Premier League era, but only seven of them could be said to have earned points. That figure stands at five for this campaign already, illustrating that while the Reds aren’t scoring as many late on as you might think, their value has been immense.

The result at Selhurst Park means Liverpool are now unbeaten in their last 30 league games, which is the joint-third longest run by any team since the summer of 1992. As their next four matches are against teams currently residing in the bottom half of the table, the Reds stand a good chance of keeping the streak going at least until they head to Qatar for the World Club Championship. But they’ll be looking for wins, and their form suggests they’ll get them.