Using data to assess Hibernian winger Steven Bradley’s loan spell at Dundalk – data analysis

Dundalk secured an impressive win over league leaders Shamrock Rovers last Friday, narrowing the gap at the top of the League of Ireland Premier Division.

The 1-0 win takes Dundalk to within five points of Shamrock with a game in hand as the 2022 league campaign moves past the halfway point.

One of the keys to the Lilywhites impressive season so far has been the form of Scottish winger Steven Bradley, on loan from Hibernian.

Signed by Hibs in 2019 following the expiry of his youth contract at Queen’s Park, 20-year-old Bradley is enjoying a fine loan spell at Oriel Park following a productive loan with Ayr United in the Scottish Championship in the first part of the 2021/22 season.

Bradley, who also spent time in the academy at Rangers in his youth career, started his latest loan off in sensational form scoring four goals in his first three games to pick up the season’s first league Player of the Month award.

Playing in a right-wing/attacking midfield position in Dundalk’s favoured 4-2-3-1 or wide right in their 4-1-4-1 on occasions, Bradley has racked up 1,174 league minutes at the time of writing.

In this data analysis, we will look at Bradley’s numbers from his spell in Ireland so far in detail, using statistics to assess whether he could be ready to make an impact on the first team at Hibs soon.

Analysis

We’ll start with several scatter graphs to give an initial picture of Bradley’s performance in the League of Ireland so far this season. We will then use a percentile rank pizza chart to assess Bradley’s data in more depth.

The dataset used for both the initial scatter graphs and then the pizza chart includes players who have played a minimum of 700 minutes, predominantly as a wide midfielder or a winger, in this season’s League of Ireland. All the data for this analysis is retrieved from Wyscout.

Tableau is used to create the scatter graphs, with Python used to convert the per 90 numbers into percentile ranks for the pizza chart.

Goals

First, we’ll look at a scatter graph for goals. As mentioned, Bradley started his loan spell brilliantly in terms of goals, bagging four in his first three. He hasn’t been able to add to his tally since then though and has a current non-penalty goal per 90 number of 0.31. Overall, he has overperformed on his xG per 90, which is 0.16 per 90.

Assists

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