In this week's Talking Reds, Daniel Rhodes offers a statistical breakdown of Liverpool's defensive duties so far this season...

Brendan Rodgers' Liverpool side has received a lot of praise recently for their performance levels, their results and, more often than not, for their attacking prowess. If you want to see goals, then Liverpool is the team to watch. If you want cagey, tactical chess matches, with very few chances, but defensive solidity and a heart rate lower than 200 beats per minute, Liverpool is the team to avoid.

Commentators and analysts are salivating over the free-flowing football, the movement, the number of chances and the volume of goals we score; they are, however, also just as predictable when it comes to our defence - our weak link. Note the word 'defence' rather than 'defending'. I think there is a subtle, but crucial, difference. One area of football is often just a consequence of the other. The debate seems to want to isolate the three areas of the team into single units of footballing currency: defence, midfield, attack. While the attack can dine out on the lavish adjectives being thrown at them, the defenders need to scrimp and save before they can even dream of sitting at the same table of excellence. But is this fair? Not really. It is harsh. And it ignores the crucial dynamics that exist within teams. The key point is exposure: our defence is exposed far more often than other teams, because we commit so many players forward in attack. This doesn't make the individual component parts weak, it just means their jobs are harder than that of a centre-back or full-back playing in a team that insists on two banks of four players protecting the goal.

In attack

Only Manchester City (68) have scored more goals than this Liverpool side so far this season (66). The drop off to third is also fairly significant (18), with Arsenal and Chelsea having scored 48.

The same two sides top the chart for the number of goals scored inside the penalty area: MCFC (54); Liverpool (50); AFC (43); CFC (38). Again, with goals from outside the area, the trend continues: LFC (16); MCFC (14); EFC (12).

Shots on target (SOT) involve the same two teams, but this time Liverpool top the chart with (175) from 26 games or 6.7 attempts hitting the target per game; Manchester City have recorded (154) from 25 games or 6.16 per game.

There's also a subjective metric called 'clear cut' or 'big chances'; Liverpool top that table by some margin: LFC (76); MCFC (61); AFC (56); THFC (52); MUFC (43).

In defence

At the back we have conceded 1.23 goals per game this season, which ranks eighth in the division. Not good enough if you want to be up there with the best, challenging for the title; however, the overall picture changes when you look at the home and away split. At home, we have the second best defence in the league: having conceded 0.69 goals per game. Away from Anfield, we're down in 15th place, after conceding 1.77 goals per game. This figure is slightly skewed by fixture difficulty at this point in the season. We have played all the big sides (Man City, Arsenal, Chelsea, Spurs and Everton) away from home, and most of them still have to visit Anfield.

Another way of measuring goals scored and conceded is 'goals supremacy' (the net goals we have scored and conceded). This is where it starts to emerge about the open nature of games involving Rodgers' Liverpool. We rank second in the league with +1.31 goals per game (+2.23 at home (2nd) and +0.38 away (5th).

The crucial aspect of this argument, however, is the total goals per game: Liverpool matches average a total of 3.77 goals; at home, perhaps surprisingly, that drops slightly to 3.62 but rises away from home to 3.92. This is highest goals-per-game rate in the whole league, and suggests to me at least, that it is deliberate. Rodgers wants matches involving Liverpool to be as open as possible, with more chances, more end-to-end football, and hopefully, more goals. But a direct consequence of this will be the exposure this approach puts on the individual defenders. When you commit players forward in attack, once you lose the ball in transition, defensive players can find themselves in situations where opposition attackers are running at them in 1 v 1, or even, 1 v 2 overloads. This is a very different context, and exposes the individual a lot more, than if they're part of a defensive unit that sits deep in numbers.

One way to try and measure this is the amount of defensive errors a team makes. Manchester City, Stoke, Spurs and Norwich top the 'errors leading to a goal' table with nine each; followed by Liverpool and Villa with eight. It is interesting to note that the best teams in terms of making the fewest errors are Crystal Palace with one and Hull City, who are the only team not to make an error leading to a goal all season. Does this indicate that their defences are less exposed than maybe Manchester City or Liverpool? A similar pattern emerges when looking at 'errors leading to a shot', where again Liverpool (31), Arsenal (26) and Man City (20) occupy three of the 'top' four places in this unwanted league table. Again, the bottom two sides are Crystal Palace (six) and Hull City (with just three defensive errors all season).

Conclusion

Is this cast iron evidence that attacking teams will commit more defensive errors because their defences are more exposed? No. But it is an area that requires further investigation. One reason is that this particular metric is flawed because it only measures errors made with the ball; and highlights the difficulty in assessing defenders and defending. It's easy to heap praise on attacking players, especially when they play within a system that places its focus on going forward in numbers, and we can measure their progress with goals, shots, assists, through balls and key passes.

And of course, if we can reduce the number of individual errors - both on and off the ball - that will only improve our away form (we can't really improve at Anfield, as we're close to perfection).

Nevertheless, the debate isn't as simple as: our is attack is superb, our defence is suspect. Our defence is suspect, because of the way we attack. One is a consequence of the other, and not only that, but if we enjoy creating so many good quality chances, then we might have to deal with our defence looking exposed from time to time.

The whole sport is a mixture of risk versus reward: some teams, like Crystal Palace and Hull City, don't commit many players forward, thus reducing their potential risk of conceding because they remain compact and defend as a unit (rather than two centre-backs and a full-back up against two strikers and an advanced midfielder). Conversely, teams like Manchester City and Liverpool regularly try and overload the opposition, taking far more risk in the hope of greater rewards - more goals. Not only that, but once we're winning 1-0 or 2-0, ultra-attacking teams don't let up, they try and score again and again. This can only be a positive mindset to develop long-term, as the game against Fulham demonstrated; even though we made one or two individual errors, the team knew it had goals in it. Against Arsenal at home, we could easily have sat back once we went 2-0 up, but rather than try and keep it compact, tight, defending as a unit and reducing our risk, we went for the jugular, ignoring the potential of losing a clean sheet, in the search for more goals. It worked, brilliantly. It will continue to work; however, it will also continue to leave the defenders exposed to tougher situations than many defenders experience, and for that, they deserve credit and appreciation, rather than any criticism.

All data was sourced from FantasyFootballScout.co.uk and Statto.com.

Follow the author @analysesport and read more of his work at tomkinstimes.com.