Andoni Iraola has had a good start to life in the Liverpool dugout.

Aside from Enzo Maresca, no manager who was new to a club in the summer is higher in the Premier League and while the current Manchester City boss had experience at a big six club, Iraola was making the jump from Bournemouth, where expectation and the spotlight is far smaller.

Liverpool are fourth in the league, one point shy of overachievers Brighton and already six off pace setters City and Arsenal – and yet there is one stat that sticks out like a sore thumb.

Of all 20 teams in the Premier League this season, only one has created fewer big chances than Liverpool so far. That team is Coventry, who are second bottom in the table, and Liverpool’s 11 is almost half of what Arsenal have generated. It’s almost a third of what City have created.

And yet, it is not as if Liverpool are struggling for goals. They are the ninth-highest top-scorers, so why is their big chance creation so low?

The answer is somewhere in both the tactics Iraola deploys and the tactics opponent managers use to try and stifle the most expensively assembled attacking outfit in the league.

Iraola’s style is built upon breaking quickly at pace. Opta measures direct speed which is the average speed of ball movement towards the opponent’s goal line during an attacking sequence and Liverpool are fourth in that, behind only Hull, Brentford and Coventry.

However, unlike those other three, Liverpool often face a back line that is hunkered down. Ahead of the weekend’s fixtures, Opta also measured that Liverpool faced the highest percentage of low blocks, with 28% of the attacks running into them. Conversely, they faced a high block just 15% of the time.

Whereas at Bournemouth, Iraola did not face low-sitting teams with such frequency and so Liverpool are countering only to find the opponent is already sat there waiting. It is why of the 10 fast breaks Liverpool have had this season, just one has resulted in a goal.

In recent years, countering at speed was central to Liverpool’s tactics and a front three of Roberto Firmino, Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane were able to punish any team that lost the ball too far forward. Jurgen Klopp did though also face the issue of low blocks and the key to that then becomes your playmakers.

For Liverpool this season, Florian Wirtz is arguably the only out-and-out playmaker at the club and his price tag coupled with an underwhelming debut campaign means there is always a lot of focus on what he does.

After plenty of criticism from the likes of Jamie Carragher, his match against Brentford has been highlighted as one which supposedly ‘answered back’ after he created nine chances and yet none of these were big chances.

Of the nine key passes he made, Wirtz combined for 0.53 xA and that is essentially the story of Wirtz. He will give passes that players will shoot from but very rarely plays that killer final pass that presents a goal on a plate for an attacker.

There is another key difference between Klopp’s Liverpool and Iraola’s. Firmino was instructed to drop deep and free up space for Mane and Salah, who both played as inside forwards, to cut in. Isak is staying up high as a more normal number nine would and so Bradley Barcola and Victor Munoz are being pushed out wide.

Wirtz is a symbol of what this current Liverpool is, a team that creates chances but poor ones. According to Understat.com, Liverpool have created 11.83 xG this season, the eighth lowest in the league, but the reason why they are in fourth comes down to a different reason – they have players that are very good at scoring goals.

Alexander Isak is outperforming his xG by 1.3. Cody Gakpo, who is the player most stylistically like Mane and Salah, is also ahead as is Munoz.

Aside from the opening game against the chance-gifting Newcastle, Liverpool have not created an xG higher than 1.8 in a game this season. Against Brighton, they created a lower xG than their opponents and yet won 2-0.

If you were to make a conclusion about Liverpool, you may say this is unsustainable, and yet the opposite is likely true. When you have a squad value over €1 billion you can simply rely on your players continuing to be good, and this tactic may actually help more than hurt against bigger teams who feel more obliged to play high up the pitch.

Other than against City, who Liverpool were in control against until Ryan Gravenberch’s red card, Liverpool have played teams who will have expected to lose to them and so it will be most interesting to see how they perform against teams who would not sit back.

That first game should come on Wednesday in the EFL Cup, but the visit of Arsenal to Anfield next Sunday looks the a serious test of Iraola’s tactics.