The Expert: Is Coutinho the Premier League's best player?

There was a time in the early eighties, when the suspicion was that physical attributes were becoming more important in football than the technical or the creative, that Hans-Pieter Briegel was held up as the future of the game. He was a former decathlete, a muscular and powerful full-back, and, while he was a perfectly decent player, the thought that everybody would need his physical attributes seemed somehow reductive. 

Physical preparation, of course, has become even more important since then. The dilettantish hard-smoking, heavy-drinking winger is no more. But it’s significant that football is entirely dominated by Briegel-types, that even in a style as aggressive, as high tempo as Liverpool’s, there is a place for a Philippe Coutinho. He has great energy, yes, but he is only 5’7”. He works prodigiously hard, but his main value to the side is the quickness of his feet and the sharpness of his imagination. 

“The manager asks us to move a lot and that’s what we tried to do in the game and create space for our team-mates,” Coutinho said after Sunday’s 6-1 win over Watford. “That’s what we tried to do today. We had a good win, it’s good for us and we are happy with that.” 

But that seems to sell it short. Liverpool’s win against Watford wasn’t just important in itself. It wasn’t just a crushing victory that carried them top of the table going into the international break having scored four more goals than any other side in the division and twice as many as all but five other sides. It was a statement of intent that may have a knock-on effect down the line. Liverpool are building an aura. 

They’ve won games 4-1, 5-1 and 6-1 at home this season. Opponents will start to fear trips to Anfield. They’ll go there as they once went to Old Trafford or Stamford Bridge with the avoidance of humiliation at the forefront of their mind, effectively settling for a 2-0 defeat before the game has begun. And that means that there will be times when Liverpool are not at their best when they get away with a straightforward victory against sides too timid to provoke them, just as Liverpool did on occasions 30 years ago. 

Central to that attacking edge is Coutinho. He scored one and set one up on Sunday, taking his tally to the season to five goals and five assists. He’s already only three goals behind his best ever Premier League season and only two assists short. But there are other striking statistics. Given the pace with which Liverpool play, it might be thought that they sacrifice accuracy at times for speed, but Coutinho’s pass completion rate has gone up this season to the highest level of his career. 

Shots per game are at roughly the same level of last season but there has been a notable improvement in key passes. Breaking those down it becomes apparent that the number of those key passes classed as through balls has remained relatively constant; in other words, a higher proportion of his key passes are not through-balls than previously thought, which suggests how Liverpool are less reliant on hitting space behind opponents. 

That’s significant because when they lost to Burnley on the second weekend of the season, the thought was that Liverpool might struggle against teams who sat deep against them. Coutinho, though, has been able to find dangerous passes without playing through-balls. That doesn’t mean sides should push up against Liverpool because they are still devastating on the break but what it does mean is that sitting deep is no guarantee of frustrating them. 

Creativity like that cannot be achieved by effort alone.

Who do you think has been the best player in the Premier League this season? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below