Dominik Szoboszlai didn’t just bag himself the official Man of the Match award for his performance against Nottingham Forest on Sunday. According to Opta’s Player Ratings, he put in the second-best performance throughout the Premier League in matchweek 10.
As Eddie Nketiah bagged a hat-trick, the Liverpool man was never likely to oust the Arsenal forward from those rankings. But as the Opta weekly review noted with respect to Szoboszlai, “He won possession back for Liverpool 12 times, more than any player on either side… The Hungarian was involved in seven shots for his side in this match, the most of any player.” Two of those seven contributions were clearly more significant than the other five. Despite setting a creative record for Liverpool which dates back two decades, the former RB Leipzig man had yet to register his first assist for his new team. That drought was ended in style with a pair against Forest.
Assists are a notoriously dubious metric, with so much riding on what occurs after the pass has been made. However, Szoboszlai’s deliveries were both wholly integral to the goals that they created and the pleasing aspect of them was that they were so completely different.
In terms of Liverpool assists in 2023/24, at this point they are unique too. For the first, the Reds’ second goal of the match, Szoboszlai cut the ball back for Darwin Núñez to score. Prior to that, there had been no goal-creating pass hit from inside the opposition’s six-yard box this term.
