The start of the 2020/21 English Premier League season has been nothing short of entertaining. In the 12 game weeks that we have had, there have been a whopping 315 goals scored at an average of 2.65 goals per game. You do need to score goals to win games and while defenders would not be too pleased by the above statistics, the attackers cannot seem to get enough. They are crucial to their side’s chances and the onus is on them to put the ball in the back of the net to seal the maximum points possible. Hence, it is important to have better frontmen in your side and it is also evident as to why the bigger clubs with better attackers are able to consistently finish higher up the league. In this data analysis, however, we will look at the data and statistics of wingers outside the “Big Six” in the Premier League and identify the standout performers so far this season. The “Big Six” would consist of Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham and Arsenal and despite their varying degrees of performances so far this season, any winger from these sides would be omitted from our analysis.
Criteria
As mentioned above, no player among the “Big Six” clubs would be considered in this analysis. Furthermore, only players that have played a minimum of 500 minutes for their respective clubs have been taken into account and these players should have played down the wing for the majority of their games as their statistics would not be comparable otherwise. For this reason, players who have operated at other positions primarily and only played as wingers in certain matches or phases have been omitted from our analysis as well. Our analysis will look at various data such as the goal involvements, passing and dribbling statistics of the eligible wingers in order to identify the key performers.
Goal involvement
In the modern age of football, a winger’s role is no longer limited to picking out the centre-forward in the box. Wingers, with all their skill and agility, are now tasked with creating chances for themselves and their teammates almost out of nowhere and it is the best wingers that carry out this task consistently. In the above graph, we compare the assist statistics of the wingers to their expected assist data to identify the standout providers.
Aston Villa’s Jack Grealish is the outstanding performer in this metric, with the Englishman recording 0.51 assists per 90 or rather an assist nearly every two games. He also outperforms his expected assist statistic of 0.34 and is well ahead of James Rodríguez in second. The Columbian has had a good start to the season himself, recording 0.34 assists per 90 which is well ahead of his xA of 0.23. His teammate Richarlison has the third-highest assists with 0.31 per 90 and massively outperforming his xA per 90 of just 0.13. The Wolves duo of Daniel Podence (0.26 assists/90 and 0.11 xA/90) and Pedro Neto (0.23 assists/90 and 0.23 xA/90) follow, with the former having performed well above his expected statistic.
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