Finding the best centre-backs in the Segunda Division – data analysis

With the Segunda Division 2020/21 season kicking off, I thought its important to know the players to look out for! Hence starting from the back, I decided to look at the centre-backs who were outstanding in their previous season based on their stats. In this data analysis, we will try to find out the best centre-back purely based on data and statistics. The analysis is going to be on target and we will only look at the key features corresponding to a successful centre-back.

Initial data-check and methodology 

To begin with, we first remove the players who were promoted to LaLiga as we are trying to find the centre-backs to look out for this season in the Segunda División and will only look at players who have played a minimum of 800 minutes. As mentioned earlier, we would only look at the key features and shortlist accordingly.

The scatter plots would have four boxes, out of which we would only be looking at the top right corner box which typically means the best in both the metrics we took and theyll be in red dots while the rest will be in blue. Since many of them would have made it to the top right corner, we will again divide the box into four, and look at the right top box which means they are best. We would also only look at the stats who are in the final right top corner box, while the others will be noted. We would only look at the players who keep occurring in our shortlists and would neglect players who have performed well in only one set of the metric.

Data analysis 

We begin to look at the most basic and fundamental attribute of the defenders and hence would look at the defensive actions. In this below scatter, we have the players win percentage in the y-axis, their win percentage in defensive duels in x-axis while the size of each circle indicates their total number of duels per 90.

A bunch of players have made it to the top right column, but only four have progressed to the extreme right corner. On top of the list stands the 22-year-old Manu Hernando a loanee from Real Madrid (third tier), sees success in 79.95% of his aerial duels and 72.15% of success in his defensive duels while he involves himself in as much as 9.12 duels per 90. The next player to be noticed is Juande Rivas, who has the highest success percentage of 73.68% in defensive duels while his victory in aerial duels holds a success percentage of 69.77% while he participates in 10.25 duels per 90 on an average.

The remaining two players in our shortlist for this first section are Esteban Saveljich and Ivan Kecojević. Both being experienced players enjoy 67.01% and 66.67% success in aerial duels respectively while their defensive duels success also holds a similar percentage of value 71.36% and 73.33% respectively. Its to be noted that Saveljich involves himself in 13.87 duels per 90 which is quite impressive while Kecojević involves himself in 9.16 duels per 90.

Moving on with