Towards identifying the most productive attacking players in Europe 2015-01-20

Introduction

Traditional individual statistics (that is, before the advent of “advanced” metrics), were limited to goal scoring, with Top Scorer tables common. More recently, data regarding assists has been collected, which adds information when considering attacking production.

It has been noted by many proponents of advanced metrics that simple statistics like this are inadequate in describing the attacking productivity of individuals due to biases which are incorporated by the following:

• Disparity in game time – players who play more have greater opportunity for goals and assists.
• The inclusion of penalties – players who take penalties have a greater opportunity for goals and this does not necessarily reflect a greater attacking ability. Other biases exist around the team that the individual plays for (ability to create opportunities, for example) and the role that a player is asked to play in the team.

To tackle the two specific biases described in the bullet-points above, StatsBomb suggests the use of Non-Penalty Goals (NPG) rather than Goals, and the use of “per 90 minutes” statistics to fairly compare players which different playing times. To that end, many people have used Non-Penalty Goals and Assists per 90 minutes (referred to hereafter as NPGA90) to compare attacking output. This is the metric used in this post.

Results

Statistics for all players in the Big 5 European leagues (England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) were pulled from transfermarkt.com. Only data from domestic league fixtures was considered. After cleaning up, NPG90 was plotted against Assists90. The top 5 performers in terms of NPGA90 (of those who had played at least 180 minutes) are circled in red and annotated on these charts. The best performer as measured by the traditional metric, top goalscorer, is circled in blue on each chart. The weight of a point represents the number of minutes played (a darker point represents a player who has played more minutes).

Analysis and discussion is omitted for this post – it is hoped that the charts and data will speak for themselves.

Europe

1. Cristiano Ronaldo, 1.9 NPGA90 (28 Goals (8 Penalty), 12 Assists, 1516 Mins)
2. Lionel Messi, 1.568 NPGA90 (19 Goals (0 Penalty), 10 Assists, 1665 Mins)
3. Frank Lampard, 1.54 NPGA90 (5 Goals (0 Penalty), 2 Assists, 409 Mins)
4. Papiss Demba Cisse, 1.274 NPGA90 (9 Goals (1 Penalty), 1 Assists, 636 Mins)
5. Tranquillo Barnetta, 1.253 NPGA90 (2 Goals (0 Penalty), 3 Assists, 359 Mins)

Top goalscorer: Cristiano Ronaldo, 1.9 NPGA90 (28 Goals (8 Penalty), 12 Assists, 1516 Mins)

Top ineligible (less than 180 minutes played): Mattia Valoti, 3.051 NPGA90 (1 Goals (0 Penalty), 1 Assists, 59 Mins)

England

1. Frank Lampard, 1.54 NPGA90 (5 Goals (0 Penalty), 2 Assists, 409 Mins)
2. Papiss Demba Cisse, 1.274 NPGA90 (9 Goals (1 Penalty), 1 Assists, 636 Mins)
3. Kun Aguero, 1.237 NPGA90 (14 Goals (2 Penalty), 4 Assists, 1164 Mins)
4. Didier Drogba, 1.2 NPGA90 (3 Goals (0 Penalty), 1 Assists, 300 Mins)
5. Diego Costa, 1.075 NPGA90 (17 Goals (0 Penalty), 2 Assists, 1590 Mins)

Top goalscorer: Diego Costa, 1.075 NPGA90 (17 Goals (0 Penalty), 2 Assists, 1590 Mins)

Top ineligible: Rolando Aarons, 1.714 NPGA90 (1 Goals (0 Penalty), 1 Assists, 105 Mins)

France

1. Alexandre Lacazette, 1.109 NPGA90 (20 Goals (4 Penalty), 7 Assists, 1867 Mins)
2. Yoann Gourcuff, 1.078 NPGA90 (3 Goals (0 Penalty), 1 Assists, 334 Mins)
3. Yassine Benzia, 0.994 NPGA90 (2 Goals (0 Penalty), 0 Assists, 181 Mins)
4. Nabil Fekir, 0.988 NPGA90 (8 Goals (0 Penalty), 6 Assists, 1275 Mins)
5. Valentin Lavigne, 0.889 NPGA90 (3 Goals (0 Penalty), 1 Assists, 405 Mins)

Top goalscorer: Alexandre Lacazette, 1.109 NPGA90 (20 Goals (4 Penalty), 7 Assists, 1867 Mins)

Top ineligible: Billel Omrani, 2.5 NPGA90 (1 Goals (0 Penalty), 0 Assists, 36 Mins)

Germany

1. Tranquillo Barnetta, 1.253 NPGA90 (2 Goals (0 Penalty), 3 Assists, 359 Mins)
2. Josip Drmic, 1.233 NPGA90 (3 Goals (0 Penalty), 1 Assists, 292 Mins)
3. Bastian Schweinsteiger, 1.159 NPGA90 (1 Goals (0 Penalty), 2 Assists, 233 Mins)
4. Sebastian Rode, 1.064 NPGA90 (1 Goals (0 Penalty), 4 Assists, 423 Mins)
5. Arjen Robben, 1.035 NPGA90 (10 Goals (1 Penalty), 3 Assists, 1043 Mins)

Top goalscorer: Alexander Meier, 0.893 NPGA90 (13 Goals (1 Penalty), 1 Assists, 1310 Mins)

Top ineligible: Leroy Sane, 1.5 NPGA90 (1 Goals (0 Penalty), 0 Assists, 60 Mins)

Italy

1. Pablo Osvaldo, 1.246 NPGA90 (5 Goals (0 Penalty), 3 Assists, 578 Mins)
2. Duvan Zapata, 1.204 NPGA90 (4 Goals (0 Penalty), 0 Assists, 299 Mins)
3. Felipe Anderson, 1.167 NPGA90 (5 Goals (0 Penalty), 5 Assists, 771 Mins)
4. Alessandro Matri, 1.136 NPGA90 (7 Goals (0 Penalty), 6 Assists, 1030 Mins)
5. Massimo Coda, 1.054 NPGA90 (2 Goals (0 Penalty), 3 Assists, 427 Mins)

Top goalscorer: Carlos Tevez, 1.02 NPGA90 (13 Goals (2 Penalty), 5 Assists, 1412 Mins)

Top ineligible: Mattia Valoti, 3.051 NPGA90 (1 Goals (0 Penalty), 1 Assists, 59 Mins)

Spain

1. Cristiano Ronaldo, 1.9 NPGA90 (28 Goals (8 Penalty), 12 Assists, 1516 Mins)
2. Lionel Messi, 1.568 NPGA90 (19 Goals (0 Penalty), 10 Assists, 1665 Mins)
3. Neymar, 1.222 NPGA90 (12 Goals (0 Penalty), 3 Assists, 1105 Mins)
4. Karim Benzema, 1.139 NPGA90 (8 Goals (0 Penalty), 8 Assists, 1264 Mins)
5. Florin Andone, 1.08 NPGA90 (2 Goals (0 Penalty), 1 Assists, 250 Mins)

Top goalscorer: Cristiano Ronaldo, 1.9 NPGA90 (28 Goals (8 Penalty), 12 Assists, 1516 Mins)

Top ineligible: Sandro Ramirez, 1.184 NPGA90 (2 Goals (0 Penalty), 0 Assists, 152 Mins)

Comments

This is the first of a new style of posts on this blog. Data has been pulled, processed and plotted using R. This post has been created using R Markdown and knitr. For this blog, these developments allow new data sources to be used in posts as well as better processing of large volumes of data and reproducible presentations (it is hoped that these charts will be published at intervals during the season to show current top performers).

It is intended that a number of regular reports of this nature will be published on this blog at intervals. Longer, more in-depth, individual pieces of analysis will be published as the author's schedule permits. It is hoped that the content and detail of such posts will compensate for their infrequency.

For those interested, the Github for this NPGA90 project will be linked in future updates. Other projects will be linked in their posts.