Roberto Firmino 2019/20 – scout report

A decade ago a strikers job was simple  to score goals. Whilst this is still largely the case, over time as tactics have evolved, a striker’s measure of success can no longer be quantified by the commodity of goals. Any football fan you ask will now be able to reel off a multitude of various duties a striker can be enlisted to perform, beyond that of sticking the ball in the net. As a result, it’s become a case for dispute as to whether a striker who isn’t scoring goals is still worth their place in the team as the goal metric is no longer reliable to illustrate whether a striker is (under)performing.  

Roberto Firmino is a striker who often falls in this grey area. His ability on and off the ball was long unnoticed, until a few seasons ago where he became notoriously underrated. With his false-nine positioning and ability to knit attacks together from enclosed central areas, Firmino’s goal scoring record occasionally dwindled which, to bloggers delight earned him the public title of being seriously underrated. 

This season has had a different feel however for the Brazilian who has failed to score at Anfield in the league. With his side now not being as prolific as seasons past, this tactical analysis provides a scout report into Firmino to decipher whether the false-nine has moved from underrated to underperforming.

Traditional Metrics

To curate this analysis, I have taken the player statistics from all the top strikers across Europe, looking in particular at the domestic league games in the 2019/20 season. By analysing the top strikers and comparing their figures to Firmino’s we’ll be able to see where the Brazilian ranks amongst the worlds best.

Note that with the comparisons being against the very best  which is how Firmino should be measured  the results don’t necessarily mean poor performance, just worse than the elite  context is key. 

To begin, I started with the traditional metrics of a striker  goalscoring. The graph below measures each striker’s Expected Goals per 90mins (xG90) and cross-references it against their shots on target per 90mins (Sh90). The size of each marker is dictated by the average number of goals per 90 of each player, therefore, the more goals, the bigger the marker.

The results are clear in terms of how Firmino stacks up against his rivals. With an xG90 of just 0.44, Firmino sits in the lower quadrant, under the average set by his peers of 0.595. If we compare this to Timo Werner of RB Leipzig, who has been linked to Liverpool in the last few months, Firmino is outperformed by Werner’s xG90 of 0.62. We can also see that Firmino is registering fewer shots on target per match than his counterparts. The Brazilian’s 2.9 attempts on target again fall under the average line and is greatly overshadowed by the majority of other strikers  see Cristiano Ronaldo’s Sh90 of 5.53.

This will likely have something to do with the role undertaken in Jürgen Klopp’s system, with Firmino dropping deeper and linking attacks more frequently than blinkered goal-hungry strikers. Further to this, the graph doesn’t show the average xG per shot on target. As we know, fewer higher quality shots are more successful in the long run compared to a higher quantity of lower shots. What it does show, however, is that even if Firmino is 100% accurate with his shooting, there’s still a suppression  be it in the style of Liverpool’s approach or Firminos ability to find shooting space  on the number of attempts the number-9 is having. As a result, we can see Firminio’s marker is the smallest on the graph, averaging just 0.28 goals per 90.  

The first test wasn’t