Our Striker dilemma
I was going to post about our strikers before the game, but decided to wait till after the game just in case. The game only proved what I had worked out earlier.
Before the match, and for the past week or two, everyone has been talking about 2 issues -
- 4-5-1 vs. 4-4-2
- Why Wenger doesn’t start Bendtner ahead of Adebayor following his performance in recent games.
I will not discuss the first issue now. Instead I will discuss the latter issue using statistics.
Wenger today played with Bendtner and Eduardo up front giving Adebayor a rest. Unfortunately Bendtner had a total nightmare of a game which ended disgracefully or rather stupidly from his side with a rash tackle. These things happen, this is football, and he still needs some more experience. We’ve seen these kind of silly mistimed tackled from lack of experience happen before with Denilson this season and Fabregas a couple of years ago. Hopefully its a learning experience for Nicklas.
On the other hand, Eduardo proved his reputation as a cool finisher with a killer instinct. Following his excellent finishes as Blackburn, he had two more today at Everton. The guy makes finishing look too easy. His record at Zagreb and for Croatia is nothing less than amazing. People have been on his back here at Arsenal so far this season, but in fact he has been excellent too.
Now the numbers part, which striker is the best of the pack this season??
I took the number of minutes each player played, and then got averages for goals, assists, and shots on target. I also got the percentage of shots that are on target from total shots. It will all make sense in a minute I hope -
These statistics are for all competitions this season.
Eduardo is a true striker. In his limited opportunities, he really made the most out of them, leading the way in terms of goals per 90 minutes played. He is also the most accurate, with more than 64% of his shots being on target!
With his excellent finishing, and these impressive statistics, I’d like to hear from people who still don’t rate him.
We are blessed this season with an excellent forward line full of talent, but in recent years we have been criticized for our lack of an out and out striker. Let’s hope Eduardo will fill that slot for us as well as he did previously in his career!
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Makes sense.
Beautiful website!
Great job mate!
Keep it up!!
Adebayor comes 3rd in accuracy, last in assists, and last in % of shots on target
why does Wenger insist on playing him all the time?
Nice analysis bro…I think you also need to give the total minutes played…I do like all the four…but we shud not be too harsh with Ade as he has a different role when we play 4-5-1
Pedro,
Thanks alot
goonerboy,
Adebayor is definitely our man this season. First of all, he added a whole new dimension to our game. In the past everyone was expecting us to pass the ball into the net and that was our only option. With Adebayor, we have the long ball, where his strength and height help us tremendously. In free kick situations we are more dangerous too. Adebayor is also very quick which helps in our counter attacks. One aspect of his game that people seem to go unnoticed is his defending. He does a great job in hustling for every ball. Unfortunately people seem to only remember the misses. Also, like Sujith said, in the 4-5-1, he is a monster!
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Sujith, I totally agree. There are many variables that are not considered here and can change the stats.
For example, like you said, the type of formation we play affects the final stats. Adebayor often plays as a lone striker and needs to make double the effort to put these numbers. Also, the quality of opposition in each game, and more importantly, other injured players. When Fabregas and Hleb got injured last month, it drastically changed our flow and game. The strikers couldn’t do anything about that so it couldve affected whoever played negatively.
I hope that makes sense.
Interesting blog and analysis of the strikers. I’m sure Arsene would have all these stats as well as plenty of others about overall contribution to the team play. One of the many things that Ade brings to the team is the way his non-stop running and hassling for the ball creates space for the midfield to score as we saw earlier in the season. He also tires out the defenders to enable the super-subs to come on and pick up opportunities.
[…] wrote a post earlier regarding our strikers and how they measure up against each other in different categories. The one main statistic that matters the most has to be the Goals per 90 […]
Some really good research and an excellent article.
However, in your reference to this in a more recent blog, you say that the most important stat is goals scored per 90 mins. Personally, I think that you should look at ‘team goals contributed per 90 mins’ i.e. use the total of goal and assists per 90 mins.
When doing this, you see that Eduardo comes in at contributing 0.95 goals per game (0.78 goals and 0.17 assists), while Bendtner has a hefty 1.03 goals per game. So this implies Bendtner contribures more.
Eduardo has a low 0.17 assists per game, and this makes sense to me, as while technically good on the ball, his main involvement is in the box, where he’ll be focused on scoring rather than passing.
Interestingly, the data shows that Robin van Persie also gets the same number of assists - 0.17 per game. At face value this suggests that he is also less involved in the interplay. But I think that actually he is more likely to start moves - maybe 2-3 passes before the assist - then look to get on the end of the final ball. And so we’ve got to note that these stats miss important aspects of player’s contributions too.
http://www.pa-sport.com/en/actim/actim-index-premier.html