Finding the best strikers of Austria – data analysis

This is the last piece of my series in which I use data to find the best players of Austria in different positions. We already looked at the centre-backs, full-backs, defensive midfielders, offensive midfielders, and wingers. In this sixth and last data analysis of this series, the task will be to find the best and most interesting strikers of Austria and probably also line out which players could be interesting in the future for Franco Foda.

In this data analysis, we will use data and statistics to find the best strikers for the Austrian national team.

Comparison

Those of you who already read some pieces of this series know with what we start: the filters. The three central and most important filters are again that the players need to be Austrians and that Foda must have the option to nominate them for the national team respectively, they must have played in the current season at least 1012 minutes and the last filter is logical that they need to be strikers or at least play in this position sometimes. The current first-choice striker of Foda in his 4-2-3-1 formation is Marko Arnautović, who throughout his career mainly played as a winger and sometimes a striker. Though in recent years he played mostly as a central striker. Due to that, we also will include Austrians in this pool who can play, for example, as a left-winger and central forward.

An additional filter is to eliminate all players who are currently part of a team in Austria’s second division and 23 years old or older. The reason for that, is that if a player is not 22 years old or younger, but still plays in Austria’s second tier, he neither isn’t nor will he be interesting for Foda in the future.

The main focus in this data analysis will be indeed on the qualities of the forwards in front of the goal, but since nowadays you expect from strikers not just to be positioned in the penalty box and wait for the ball, we will also look at other statistics and metrics. Since Arnautović is already 31 years old, it will also be interesting if we find some young and promising talents who could replace him in the upcoming years.

We kick things off by looking at the most important numbers for a striker: their goals and assists. To have a better comparison, we use the non-penalty goals instead of just the actual number of goals, and additionally, both values (as all in this data analysis) will be the ones per 90 minutes.

Christoph Monschein is clearly the player with the most non-penalty goals (0.7), but his number of assists is not that outstanding with 0.19. However, he was in this season in the Austrian Bundesliga directly involved in 20 of Austria Vienna’s 36 goals. Arnautović is the player with the fourth-best number of non-penalty goals per 90 minutes while Christoph Knasmüllner (who mainly plays as an offensive midfielder for Rapid Vienna) makes the most assists (0.54). At this point, I also want to mention Benedikt Pichler (22 years old), Adrian Grbić (23 years old), and Marko Raguž (21 years old) as these three are the three youngest players among the nine men with the most non-penalty goals.

Next, we want to dive a bit deeper into the forward’s qualities in front of the goal by looking at two interesting metrics: the number of expected goals (xG) and the goal conversion.