Liverpool score 0.0 a game without one of Pérez and Uebert
Fourteen matches with both midfielders have brought 1.4 goals a game and 0.7 conceded; the three without either have brought none at all and three shipped.
The verdict is not a matter of taste. It is a matter of fourteen games against three. With Edgardo Pérez and Uebert in the same Liverpool midfield, this season reads 10 wins, 0 draws, 4 defeats, 1.4 goals scored per game and 0.7 conceded. Without one of them it reads 0-0-3, no goals at all, and three conceded a game. Strong with, helpless without: the numbers do not leave room for a softer word.
The contrast is almost too neat for a spreadsheet. In the fourteen matches with the pair, Liverpool have scored 19.6 goals and conceded 9.8 by the per-game averages; in the three without, they have scored none and conceded nine. The arithmetic is unforgiving: the team's goals dry up entirely and the defence triples its leak.
That the two should be so entwined is not obvious from their records. Pérez, 30, is the long-serving one: 355 games and 18 goals for Liverpool since arriving from Club Atlético Tigre on 23 June 2052 for £7.2m, with a loan detour at Hull City in 2053/54 and 2054/55 that added 42 games and two goals. Uebert, 22, is the newcomer, signed from Sociedade Esportiva Palmeiras on 12 July 2062 for £17.9m, and already on 67 games and six goals for the club. One is a fixture, the other a recent arrival. Together they are the fixture.
The season has had its noise. Chelsea's 3-0 win in the Champions League on 27 October was the sort of night when the midfield is overrun and every number sours; it sits among the four defeats in the fourteen. But the aggregate is what matters: fourteen games, fourteen results, and a team that scores at a steady rate and concedes at less than one a game.
Then there are the three. No goals, nine conceded, no points. It is a small sample and a brutal one, and it is the sort of split that makes a manager's team sheet look less like a choice and more like a warning. The rest of the season will decide whether it is a quirk or a law. For now, the numbers say what the eyes have suspected: Liverpool's midfield is not a department but a partnership, and it is carrying the season.
Elsewhere in Europe this week, England's clubs have five games to their name, with three won, one drawn and one lost. Liverpool's own European night at Chelsea fell on the wrong side of that ledger, which is precisely the point. The fourteen-game body of work is strong. The three-game hole is the reason to keep the calculator close.