What to watch in UEFA Champions League: Liverpool's attack in need of jump start

Despite scoring 12 goals in Europe, Andoni Iraola's side face serious shot-quality issues, while Porto faces a must-win clash against Napoli to keep knockout hopes alive Nov 4, 2026 at 9:33 am ET • 7 min read The Champions League reaches its midpoint Wednesday night and if the last few rounds of fixtures are anything to go off, it will do so amid a hailstorm of goals. Wouldn't that be good news for Liverpool, even though their Champions League scoring record is already more impressive than in the Premier League? Meanwhile, there are plenty of high-stakes matchups at each end of the table. Real Betis are one of only four teams still standing with a 100% record but that could well be tested on the road against Borussia Dortmund.At the other end of the table, Porto have a lot of work to do. Marooned in 35th, only the Portuguese league leaders and Slovan Bratislava are yet to get among the points. Surely if they do not do something tonight against Napoli, their competition will be done, right?All that, plus Real Madrid, Arsenal and Manchester City in action tonight. It's sure to be a busy day.Liverpool's shooting troublesIf all you had to assess a team on from the season so far was the league phase table, you would believe that Liverpool are as advertised. That half a billion or so they have spent on their attack since the start of last season seems to be well spent, 12 goals from their first three Champions League games as Bradley Barcola, Florian Wirtz and Dominik Szoboszlai share in the scoring. Andoni Iraola's side may look a little vulnerable at the other end, but if you look at the talent in the Reds' roster, you score three, we'll score four-ball seems a pretty shrewd use of talent. And yet the free-scoring Liverpool of the Champions League have been hard to spot in their domestic games. With the caveat that most teams' numbers take a dink after they run into Arsenal, at the nine-game mark in the Premier League season Liverpool have just 11 goals to their name. Only some of that can be accounted for through poor finishing -- Szoboszlai, Wirtz, Barcola and Cody Gakpo have two Premier League goals off 5.24 xG -- and the bigger issue is that this team ranks 11th in the league for expected goals. CBS Sports As the graphic above indicates, there are quite widespread issues with the quality of shots Liverpool are settling for. Across Europe's top five leagues, the xG value of the average shot this season is 0.111. In no context do Iraola's team get particularly close to that mark. Instead, they take a lot of shots from outside the box, just under 40%, and they lead Europe's top five leagues for the proportion of their shots that are blocked, 37.9%.Curiously low-quality shots were not exactly an issue that bedevilled Iraola's previous team. Last season Bournemouth ranked quite highly in terms of xG per shot both from open play and dead balls. A sign of a team that was humming as a unit and had grasped how the coach wanted to turn the chaos they engendered into quality scoring chances? Iraola will hope so. That augurs better for Liverpool than the possibility that the talents in which so much has been invested just don't quite gel. That Liverpool's numbers are different in the Champions League might be telling us little more than the fact that their last two games in particular -- away to LASK, at home to Villarreal -- have been fairly favorable to run up the goals. The 12 they have scored have come off 7.23 worth of xG and a quarter of their shots are being blocked. You would not, then, want to get carried away with the idea that this is a team who will just be able to flick a switch when the Champions League music starts playing in Istanbul on Wednesday night.Porto already in can't lose territoryDefeat at home to Napoli would not actually be critical to Porto's hopes of advancing to the knockout round of the Champions League. De facto, however? Yeah, probably. If projection models and past seasons are anything to go on, nine points is a decent guide to where the cut line will land after eight games. You do not want to have to accrue all of them after the turn. After all, Porto don't really have three gimmes left after the international break. You'd fancy Francesco Farioli's side to beat Slavia Prague away and LASK at home but their other games are on the road. Feyenoord could be tough, Liverpool would be.Porto might reasonably feel they could have got more from these games. The first half against Manchester City was played even and there were half openings before Erling Haaland's late goal. Real Betis also did for them late on, two goals in the final 16 minutes earning the La Liga side a win in Seville while PSV beat them with perhaps the game's only clear opening last time out. That last line speaks to the issue that will have to be resolved over the next five games. Porto just do not take enough shots. CBS Sports Thirty of them worth a combined 2.7 xG just is not going to cut it for a team who are averaging not far off that number per game in domestic competition. Strikers Samu Aghehowa and Andre Silva have just four shots between them. Domestically, this is a team that does supplement their output from center forward with more attempts from deeper but Gabri Veiga has just five shots to his name. Borja Sainz averages nearly three and a half in the Primeira Liga. He is yet to take a shot in the Champions League. This looks like the familiar story of a Portuguese team dominating 15 dramatically inferior opponents at home and struggling when the difficulty level ramps up in Europe."The Champions League is a different competition," said Farioli. "The demands and the details make all the difference. Being effective at every moment is important, as we've seen in the first three matches."I hope experience helps us be more effective than we have been. In terms of performances, we're doing well, but we can do more, because this isn't enough. We're working to raise our level, and tomorrow is the moment to do that and claim the points we want so much." Fail to do so and that might effectively be it for Porto and this season's Champions League.Can Guirassy extend form against Spanish opposition?One might discount a player who has scored 40 goals in his last 71 league games for Borussia Dortmund with the two most devastating words in the footballing lexicon: Bundesliga tax. And you know what, sometimes those words cut through because there is truth to them. I fear that may be the case for a certain F. Wirtz.Serhou Guirassy, though? Well, right now he is finding ways to score in every competition. A poacher's finish from his only shot helped earn Dortmund a backs-to-the-wall 2-2 draw with Bayern Munich, setting him up nicely for his return to a competition where he has excelled for a number of years. In 31 Champions League games, four for Rennes and the rest in Dortmund colors, the 30-year-old has 23 goals. Admittedly, seven of those are penalties but a goal every other game at the highest level of club football is not to be sniffed at. Nor are 0.63 non-penalty expected goals per 90 minutes. Notably, Guirassy has enjoyed some of his greatest success against Spanish opposition, scoring in each encounter, a hat trick against Barcelona in 2025, perhaps his best moment. It might be that the Guinean striker is just an archetype that the best of La Liga do not face that often. At 6ft 2in, Guirassy is big, strong and impressively mobile, at least when his opponents aren't the big, hulking center backs of Chelsea and Manchester City. Could he have baited the same penalty off them that he got against Villarreal back in September? Certainly you wouldn't fancy him to have quite the same bully ball joy off set pieces that he did against Villarreal, Athletic Club and Barcelona.As for Wednesday's opponent, it might be tricky for Real Betis. It's worth saying that in their three Champions League games so far they have allowed just over 2.5 xG against good opposition: Lille, Porto and Feyenoord. In La Liga, however, they rank 18th for set piece xG allowed and set piece goals conceded. They're not particularly great at limiting touches and xG in the box either. This could be another banner day for Guirassy.