blaaklint

June 27th

To be fair, defensive stats are far more reliant on how the team defends as a unit, especially for centre backs.

Turrns out part of the reason he gets fewer touches and makes more pressures and tackles is likely because we have slightly less of the ball this year compared to last (52.2% vs 54.7%). However, his stat changes are proportionally greater than the possession changes so something else is likely having an impact too.

Had a brief look at Youri's numbers for this season and was kinda surprised to see that, according to virtually every measure, they're either the same or better than last year. The only decreases were how often he receives the ball (and thus the number of passes and dribbles he makes). Even with less of the ball, his p90 numbers for progressive passes/SCA/goals and assists (both expected and actual) have increased. Even his defensive numbers (tackles/interceptions/pressures) have improved. Of course the question stands as to why he's getting the ball less, but I feel like Youri's perceived performance may be a victim of our season rather than how he's actually played.

pretty sure it's not really possible to read much into the lap of honour. they're all going to walk around and clap, whether they're staying or going

We're shocking defensively aren't we. Good win though.

If anything, his underlying numbers are slightly better this year than last, although not as good as 19/20. Over the last three seasons, he's averaged 0.44 xG+xA per 90, suggesting like you say he already has that quality. The biggest issue is, with the exception of last year, he can't finish to save his life. The fact his shot on target percentages are actually pretty decent (mid 40s) kinda implies to me that he'd rather put a shot straight at the keeper/hit the general target and hope rather than attempt to put the ball in the corner. The crazy thing to me is that he has such good output despite being an absurdly one-dimensional player. His ball-carrying at pace is excellent but his actual ability to beat a man is woeful. His passing is crap by just about every measure, as is his defensive output. He can't finish. But somehow he still produces and has that knack of being in the right place at the right time to get on the end of chances. It's bizarre.

He's only coming to us now because they're really good mates...

tl;dr: Maddison and Iheanacho are our best finishers, Barnes is worst, nobody in the world is good enough for 2x xG. Fbref has Vardy's finishing over the last five seasons as averaging 0.02 non-penalty goals more than non-penalty xG per 90 (np:G-xG per 90). This equates to Vardy scoring an extra from the same chances as the average player every 50 games. Iheanacho over the same time frame is 0.06 np:G-xG per 90, or an extra every 17 games. According to the Statsbomb data fbref uses at least, Vardy's finishing is probably above average, and may be a slight underestimation if we assume that goalkeepers in the PL are better on average than goalkeepers over the whole dataset the xG model was trained on. If you exclude last year, which appears to be a complete outlier compared to other seasons, Vardy has a much more respectable np:G-xG rate of 0.07, or an extra goal every 14 games. This probably greater reflects my own estimation of his finishing ability from watching him play. Either way, what is more notable is that Vardy only shoots when the chance is of high quality (0.19 xG/shot over the last five years) . As a result, he scores a lot from not many chances, making his finishing appear exceptional at first glance (this is the same issue with using chance quality-blind measures such as G/shot). Vardy is still an excellent player, it's just that his goalscoring comes more from his ability to be in the right place at the right time (i.e., movement, anticpation, pace, etc.) than from his finishing. Maddison's np:G-xG per 90 is 0.06 and Tielemans' is 0.03, indicating that they are both also above average finishers. The same measure finds that, of the rest of our more attacking players, Perez is above average (0.04), Lookman and Albrighton are average (0.01) and Barnes is by far the worst (-0.05). A starting lineup of Vardy, Iheanacho, Barnes, Lookman, Maddison and Tielemans scores just under five more goals than can be expected of average finishers over a 38 game season. For comparison, the highest average np:G-xG per 90 I could find is Haaland (0.22; 8.36 goals per 38 game season). The highest single season value is Messi (0.42; 15.96). All of this should be taken with a pinch of salt: the volume of data for most players is fairly small, so inferences regarding finishing quality may be just natural variance. There may also be other factors which effect the quality of chance which aren't included in Statsbomb's xG model.

Surely it must be about them not being quite physically ready? 17 year olds are still experiencing changes, particularly to their bones, even if they're stopped growing any taller - for some people this doesn't finish until the mid-20s. I can't say I'm an expert but I'd think this makes the possibility of serious injuries higher, and combined with potentially being mentally unready and poorer facilities and care at a lower level, it would make sense that clubs would be concerned about playing late teenagers. After all, it's not just us: I'd imagine you can count the number of 17-19 year olds playing regular professional football in the UK on two hands. Probably makes more sense to just train them with your own first team, where can keep an eye on them.

i was thinking this, that maybe brunt will deal with the physicality better? even if nelson is a better player at u23 level, if he's getting bullied physically it wouldn't be a good time

the statistics he's best in are around ball progression, both passing and dribbling. last couple of seasons at lille he had pretty outrageous numbers for both. essentially, he's very good at getting the ball forward from deep positions. there's a good summary here admittedly, he hasn't really shown much of this for us so far. the pl has a much more intense style of pressing than ligue 1 but hopefully he can adapt. it's easy to forget that he's also quite young - younger than kdh even - so all hsi best years are likely ahead of him.

this is the terrifying inverse of tony pulis's west brom playing a back line of four centre backs

It's hard to stomach, and might matter less to you if you're not so interested in analytics, but according to fbref.com, Kaspar has been the second worst keeper in the PL this year.

Hopefully one day we'd get to the point where they are one and the same

I think of him as closer to prime Moussa Dembele than Toure. In his career, Bouba has one goal and an assist, but where he excels is keeping the ball in tight spots, breaking through pressure and bringing the ball up the pitch. I think he has the ability to play like Toure but that just isn't quite his game yet.

for all that we looked shaky at the back. did burnley really create any good chances? the finish for their goal was excellent but wasnt a fantastic opportunity

it'll be based on how good their xg for and against were last year. they underperformed both more significantly than any other team in the league last season

the stats have him as completely average. not awful, but arsenal could have done far better things with 30m

played a lovely ball for vardy's chance in the first 10 minutes and a nice one-two with tielemans before vardy's offside goal. also pressed well. pretty decent game tbh

interestingly, the "of" is dutch for "or" and comes from two of his ancestors marrying and being unable to decide whether they wanted to be vennegoor or hesselink

i always assumed he meant he didnt want somebody who was JUST a target man?

i did wonder if there will be players wanting to be sold/terminate their contracts if it goes ahead

Positive seems to be that they can't either

Nothing, I'm inclined to think that it was just pure chance that we were getting so many penalties and we wouldn't keep it up. I think it was also masking some of the problems we've had from open play.