Liverpool is bound to need another high points tally to beat Manchester City to the Premier League. One star in particular is more than playing his part.
It will be fascinating to see who becomes Liverpool’s player of the season when the votes are cast at the end of the campaign. There are a lot of legitimate candidates.
If it were determined by the club’s official post-game polls, Mohamed Salah would have the award locked up. He has been voted player of the match on nine occasions, almost twice as many as his nearest competitor, Darwin Núñez (five), with Dominik Szoboszlai one further back. The fact 17 players have been recognized at least once illustrates what a tremendous squad effort this campaign has been.
Dutch colossus Virgil van Dijk is also making a strong case, having scored the winner in the Carabao Cup final and defended superbly almost without fail in 2023/24. One player unlikely to garner much support for being the Reds key man this term is Wataru Endō; he has not yet won a player of the match award, for one thing. However, the captain of Japan is leading the squad in a notable metric.
FBRef holds data on every player’s individual points-per-match record, based on their team’s results from games in which they have featured. Across the last 10 seasons of Premier League action, there have been 120 examples of a player taking part in at least 19 matches and earning an average of at least 2.37 points from them, a rate which equates to 90 points across 38 games.
Yet despite there being 12 per year, in 2023/24 there are only five (although this is obviously liable to change before the end of the campaign). Four of the quintet play for Liverpool and Endō is the Reds’ top man, with his 2.53 average the equivalent of a 96-point season.
This is far from a flawless metric. Four of Endō’s league appearances were under 10 minutes (plus stoppage time) so it’s impossible to claim he had a major influence upon securing the points Liverpool earned in those matches.
But even so, the Reds have won nine and drawn two of the 11 league matches which the former Stuttgart man has started. Smaller sample be damned, that’s a 2.64 points-per-game average. Liverpool has also won nine of his 11 starts in cup competitions, the exceptions occurring with weakened sides against Toulouse and Union SG in the Europa League.
Very few people would’ve foreseen this development when the Japanese international was signed last summer. Players rarely reach 30 years of age without generating hype if they are destined for the top. There have only been 10 instances in the last decade of a player of that age or older having a better points-per-match average in the Premier League though.
It is understandable that players are judged on what they have done rather than what they might deliver, and Endō’s career did not inspire confidence. In five seasons in Europe, he had not played for a club which finished higher than ninth in its country’s top division.
Stuttgart had a better goal difference when Endō played compared to when he did not in three of the four seasons he was at the club, though, while Belgian side Sint-Truiden’s expected goal difference improved when was on the pitch (per FBRef). The data hints at a player who made his teams perform better, even if it was fair to be skeptical about his chances of making an impact with Liverpool.
And a sizeable impact he has made. Endō is likely to be in competition with the one player who possesses a better points-per-match average in 2023/24 on Sunday, as Manchester City’s Rodri is the man in question. Nobody would claim the Liverpool midfielder is as good as his counterpart from the Reds’ main title rival, but he appears to be having a broadly similar influence. It’s time for the wider world to appreciate Endō and Sunday would be a perfect time to prove the point.
