“There's something that the Kop want you to know. The best in the world is Bobby Firmino!”
The decibel levels inside Anfield reached a crescendo on Sunday as Liverpool fans serenaded Roberto Firmino for the first time since discovering the Brazilian magician is set to leave the club when his contract expires this summer.
Firmino's response was fitting — a goal within 10 minutes of entering the field to cap off a record-breaking 7-0 victory over Manchester United.
Having signed from Hoffenheim as an exciting No 10 under Brendan Rodgers in 2015, Firmino has forged his status as one of the best false nines in the modern era under Jurgen Klopp.
From no-look goals and flamboyant celebrations to tireless off-ball running — it would be difficult to find a more entertaining highlights reel among any Liverpool player in the Premier League era.
This is an ode to Liverpool's No 9.
“A football team is like an orchestra, to play we need to have people for different instruments,” said Klopp in 2020. “Some of them are louder, some of them are not that loud, but they are all important for the rhythm.
“Bobby is incredibly important, he plays like 12 instruments in our orchestra, he is incredibly important for our rhythm.”
Starting with his conductor-like ability to set the tone off the ball, Firmino has been Liverpool's first line of defence for most of Klopp's reign — often pressing from the front, blocking passing lanes, and shepherding the opponent into defensive traps.
Specifically, Firmino will often look to press the opposition pivot player after he recovers it from the defence to ensure they don't have time or space to build the attack — as shown by his recent harrying of Newcastle's Sean Longstaff last month.
Among centre-forwards since 2019-20, only Arsenal's Alexandre Lacazette has averaged more 'true tackles' — ie, tackles made plus challenges lost plus fouls committed — than Firmino's 4.8 per 1,000 opponent touches.
Put simply, Firmino has been one of Liverpool's most front-foot defenders, hounding the opposition and preventing them from building out within central areas of the pitch.
While Cody Gakpo is acclimatising to life at Anfield, he arguably gave his best Firmino impression in a false-nine role during Liverpool's 7-0 thumping of United at the weekend. However, Liverpool's evolving front line has meant their midfield and defence have looked horribly exposed at times, without a coherent pressing structure at the top end of the field.
The hard yards Firmino gets through have never been more clear than this season.
“Our number nine, give him the ball and he'll score every time.”
It would be churlish to deconstruct a chant sung by the Anfield faithful, but an ultra-harsh assessment would be that Firmino's goalscoring output is not always clinical.
Granted, his 10 goals in 1,502 on-pitch minutes this season is narrowly beating his previous best goalscoring rate, but, as the raw numbers show, he has only once scored more than 16 goals in a season.
As you can see by his 900-minute rolling average since 2017-18, there have been long periods where Firmino has underperformed (goals shown in blue) compared with the chances he has had (expected goals shown in red).
From December 2020 to January 2022, Firmino put himself through a bizarre statistical quirk as he failed to score a single home goal in all competitions for over a year.
While Firmino might not be seen as a great goalscorer, he can certainly be viewed as a scorer of great goals. Having notched his 100th Liverpool goal in August, the decisive strike was a no-look finish the Brazilian has developed into something of a brand in recent years.
It's risky, it's cheeky, it's so… Firmino, but Bournemouth, Sevilla, Arsenal and West Ham United are just some of the victims who have experienced such audacity.
Of course, there are very few people within the game who judge Firmino by his goalscoring rate. Since 2019-20, Firmino's 19.3 touches per shot is the eighth-highest rate among all Premier League centre forwards, underpinning his role within the team.
His primary remit is not to be the “finisher”, but often be the foil for others around him — most commonly Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane, with whom he has shared the field for 137 fruitful Premier League games.
“When he finishes playing people will write books about the way he interpreted the false-nine position,” said Jurgen Klopp after a previous dismantling of Manchester United in 2021.
In possession, that will often mean coming towards the ball to stitch midfield and attack together, dragging opponents towards him to make space for Mane and Salah to exploit — as shown below.
Liverpool's triangular rotations on either side of the pitch have been the blueprint for their success under Klopp and the freedom with which Firmino can play allows him to find those half-space pockets to make Liverpool tick.
Much like an orchestra, the subtlety of some instruments can be where you extract the most beauty. For Firmino, the task has been to try to quantify the value he offers with his actions.
“Firmino completely changed my view of how we had to work when it came to evaluating players with data,” says David Sumpter, professor of applied mathematics at the University of Uppsala, and the author of Soccermatics: Mathematical Adventures in the Beautiful Game.
“His attitude was what made him my favourite player but when a sporting director said 'you can't measure attitude' with analytics, we made a set of 'space-opening' metrics, and even I was surprised to see how he was so dominant in them.”
These space-opening metrics look beyond on-the-ball event data and explore the value of disruptive runs that players make — a skill in which Firmino excels.
Sumpter uses an elegant example from Liverpool's defeat to Everton in 2021. As Georginio Wijnaldum drives forward with the ball, Firmino makes a run away from goal that drags Everton's Michael Keane away with him.
While Firmino did not receive the ball, the disruption he causes to Everton's defence drags multiple players across the pitch to create space for Sadio Mane to receive the ball with no pressure on him.
Calculating the value added by such runs using off-ball tracking data, Firmino has profiled as one of the strongest disrupters in the Premier League in previous seasons.
Quite simply, his world-class appreciation of space makes room for other — perhaps more goal-hungry — forwards to receive the ball in dangerous areas.
Perhaps Liverpool fans won't truly know what they had until Firmino departs in the summer.
The Premier League's leading Brazilian goalscorer has won every trophy there is to win at Liverpool since he joined and it is telling that Firmino is one of just four first-team Liverpool players — alongside James Milner, Joe Gomez and Jordan Henderson — who remain at the club since Klopp first inherited his squad.
Very few players across world football have fulfilled such a role with the consistency and intelligence Firmino has in recent years.
As his symphony draws to a close in a red shirt, will he be missed by Liverpool fans?
“Si, Senor”
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