Scouting Forwards: Mining for Gold
The second instalment of a series dedicated to finding a new forward Liverpool.
Earlier this week, I started this Scouting Forwards series with an introductory post covering Liverpool’s current squad, as well as some of the key criteria surrounding any potential new signing. You can read that below.
Now that we’ve covered the basics, we can start mining for gold by playing with the data to determine some possible options for the Reds.
So just like my managerial series from a few months ago, this took quite a long time. I want my loyal subscribers to know that. My sample consists of every player from Europe’s top seven leagues over the past year.
In total, I’ve got just under 4,000 players from the Premier League, Ligue 1, Serie A, Eredivisie, La Liga, Primeira Liga and Bundesliga in my sample. So unless Michael Edwards starts his own competition in the next few weeks, we should have every base covered here.
But guess what? You won’t be surprised to know that 4,000 players is too many. We need to bring that number down, so let’s start including some filters to get rid of the names who don’t fit the bill.
First, we’ll remove every player born before 1998 to meet our age criteria. We want players aged 26 or under. Imposing that filter takes us to 2,053 options, which is still too many.
So what next? Let’s remove every player who has played under 1,350 minutes of league football over the past season, which equates to 15 full 90-minute matches.
We go from 2,053 options to 771. That’s more like it, but we still want fewer names, so let’s remove every player who isn’t a forward, including fixed strikers or number nines, whatever you want to call them. Robert Lewandowski, for example, is a no. Don’t forget, we’re after a wide player here.
We go from 771 to 212. Now we’re talking.
At this point, I want to direct the conversation towards what we’ve already established as the most important thing for a forward who is predominantly playing in the final third.
Simply put, the player needs to have output attached to his game. Regardless of what he’s good at, he needs to deliver, because he’s playing at the business end of the field. At this point, you might expect goals and assists to point us in the direction of likely favourites.
Nope. I won’t really be using goals and assists in this process. They are outcomes, they can just happen. I want the stuff that is more likely to persist from week to week, or it should, at least, so we’re adopting non-penalty xG and shots as opposed to putting too much weight on whether the ball crossed the line or not.
Ian Graham says being a forward is all about getting shots. Shots from optimal locations. He’s right, so we’re now going to make the sample a little smaller by removing every player who averages less than two shots and 0.2 non-penalty xG per 90.
This takes us from 212 options to 104, and just to get rid of a few more weeds, let’s remove every player who averages less than one successful dribble per 90. I’m aware that bar feels low, but that filter takes us from 104 players to 73.
Below, the 73 players have been plotted according to their non-penalty xG per 90 and shots per 90.
I could include some more filters to make the sample even smaller here, but I feel happy with where we’ve landed, so I’m going to run through the names and use common sense to pick out those who realistically seem to perform at the required level, leaving us with 49 players.
The remaining players are as follows:
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