With the January transfer window open it is an interesting time to do some recruitment analysis in order to identify players that certain clubs may look to target. The first of these articles will look at the centre-forward situation at Manchester City. Currently, City have two players competing for the lone forward role in Sergio Aguero and Gabriel Jesus, both of whom are excellent players. Why then would we produce an article looking at potential reinforcements?
The answer to that question comes in two parts. Firstly, clubs who recruit well and have a clear plan will always be doing their due diligence to ensure that they have a shortlist of players for each position or role at the club. These lists will then be accessed if a player becomes injured, leaves the club or just loses form. Secondly, there have been stories emerging from the Etihad that coach Pep Guardiola is not completely satisfied with the options that he has at the club. There is no doubting the ability of Sergio Aguero but the Argentinean international is now in his age 32 season and his peak years are beyond him. This is coupled with the fact that there is a sense that Aguero will allow his contract to run down before leaving the club at the end of the 2021/22 season. The situation around Gabriel Jesus is more complicated. The Brazilian international is 22 and should be about to come into his peak years. His performances this season have also been good and in 1642 minutes this season the Brazilian has scored 13 goals from an xG of 12.5. He has also registered 5 assists from an xA of 2.5. Broken down into per90 statistics that read as 0.71 goals from 0.69 xG per 90 and 0.27 assists from 0.14 xA per 90. Why then would City be looking to move on from Jesus? The main issue surrounds his injury history which has been significant since he moved to England with a knee injury at the beginning of 2018 seeing him miss 12 matches at an important time of the season. Since then there have been other small issues that have led to the Brazilian being unavailable. The club is, understandably, concerned that the forward is unlikely to be able to manage the workload as the first choice forward and they believe that his minutes will have to be managed carefully. That will remain the case until he has registered a significant amount of minutes with no injury problems. City are therefore actively looking to identify forward players that could come in either to replace Jesus if he is sold or as part of the continuity plan when Aguero moves on.
There are a lot of people who will assume that given the financial strength of City the club can just go out and sign any player they want. This is true, to a point, but in fact, City have a smaller pool of players to choose from than a side in the Premier League who are likely to finish in the bottom half, for example. City have to ensure that any potential new recruit is of the required quality to be able to play at the level required by Guardiola and his coaching staff. This immediately reduces the pool of players that City can recruit from. How can they identify which players to target? The answer lies in data analysis.
What does the data tell us?
For the purposes of this article, we have used data provided by Wyscout. The basic parameters were to run searches for players that played in the top five leagues (English Premier, German Bundesliga, French Ligue 1, Spanish La Liga and Italian Serie A) although we later manually added the Dutch Eredivisie and the Belgian Jupiler League. The last two were added given their tendencies to produce young players and give them playing time.
The data was further filtered to show only players under the age of 26 and those who had played at least 1000 minutes so far this season. It is unlikely that City would consider a player over the age of 26 given the peak age of forward players.
Different sets of data were used to provide snapshots of player performance so far this season. The first that we will discuss is a simple comparison of a players goals per 90 minutes and xG per 90 minutes.
We have goals on the vertical axis and xG on the horizontal. Those performing best for both metrics will appear on the top right quadrant of the scatter chart. The first thing to note is the presence of Gabriel Jesus in that cluster. This backs up the point made earlier in the article that Jesus has actually been performing very well so far this season. There are, however, also others that we need to discuss.
The most impressive performer in the chart above is the 23-year-old German international Timo Werner who is currently contracted to RB Leipzig. Inter Milans 22-year-old Argentinean forward Lautaro Martinez also pops out as an interesting option. As does the 21-year-old Nigerian forward Victor Osimhen of Lille. Finally, we have two young players who are currently playing in the Eredivisie in the 20-year-old PSV striker Donyell Malen and the 18-year-old AZ Alkmaar striker Myron Boadu.
Now let
