Scouting Forwards: Outliers

The third instalment of a series dedicated to finding a new forward Liverpool.

Jun 10, 2024

Last week, I started this Scouting Forwards series with two posts which can be read below. I’d recommend reading them before going through this new piece.

Before we get into this fresh instalment, I need to flag some housekeeping. At the end of my last post, I said we had 34 players left. We did, but I’ve since decided to slightly adjust my minutes criteria from 1,350 minutes to 1,260.

Making that tweak allows Michael Olise — who people want to hear about — to join the sample, alongside Marcus Edwards from Sporting CP. Two cool players who are worth including.

So we’ve reached crunch time now. We started with a sample of around 4,000 players from Europe’s top seven leagues, and only 36 of them remain. If you’ve come this far, you’re pretty good.

The players left in the sample are as follows:

Olise, Edwards, Yankuba Minteh, Viktor Gyökeres, João Félix, Donyell Malen, Maximilian Beier, Jamal Musiala, Nicolás González, Omar Marmoush, Pedro Gonçalves, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Rafael Leão, Igor Paixão, Bryan Mbeumo, Brahim Díaz, Francisco Trincão, Amine Gouri, Matheus Cunha, Johan Bakayoko, Bradley Barcola, Maghnes Akliouche, Anthony Gordon, Charles De Ketelaere, Justin Kluivert, Moussa Diaby, Christian Pulisic, Francisco Conceição, Rayan Cherki, Jota Silva, Osame Sahraoui, Anthony Elanga, Edon Zhegrova, Nico Williams, Pedro Neto, Antoine Semenyo.

We need to delve into our final 36 players in greater detail, purely as a means of finding out more about them. They met the grade for age, minutes, shots and xG, but how do they compare across other metrics?

We can kinda go in whatever direction we want here, it just depends what we value as important. I’d personally like a good dribbler — a player who would be licking his lips at the prospect of being left isolated on the flanks with an opposing full-back — so let’s check that element.

A few things here. First, all of these guys can dribble, this just shows how they stack up against each other. Jamal Musiala and Rayan Cherki win this one, and it’s interesting that both of those players feel similar in my head. They aren’t particularly quick, but both are tricky and creative, almost like wide number tens when they occupy the flanks.

The worst of the 36 in this department? Mbeumo. Hmm, we’ll make a note of that, although just as a side note, it’s probably a lot easier to beat your opposite number on the dribble in France or the Netherlands compared to England. Just saying.

So what next? Progression up the field is pretty important in football. If you can’t get to the penalty box, you can’t shoot, and if you can’t shoot, you can’t score.

Now, the guys who are playing as forwards shouldn’t technically have to do much progressing considering their main job. The deeper players in the team should be doing most of that for them. Nevertheless, let’s see who is moving things from A to B.

Some more interesting lines here. Minteh is your signature carrier who isn’t much of a passer, whereas Gonçalves is essentially the opposite. As for the guys who do both, Musiala is another winner alongside Edwards and Olise, with Cherki shining again, too.

It’s also worth noting there are some other players who have shined across both aspects so far without coming out on top, such as Kvaratskhelia, Leão, Williams and Bakayoko.

Shall we go again? Alright, what about the same element as the last one but rather than looking at progression as a whole, we look at progression into the penalty box?

Let’s see which players are penetrating the 18-yard box through carries and passes.

Minteh is posting big numbers in the carrying department here. In fact, the only player from the entire 4,000-player sample who carries the ball into the box more often than he does is Jérémy Doku. Second is Minteh, followed by Vinícius Júnior in third.

Conceição is the passing version, with Leão, Bakayoko and Edwards looking good once again. Williams is fine, too, placed just underneath Osame Sahraoui. Olise, Cherki, all of your favourites.

So what now? Well, there is one last metric I’d like to include. It’s nothing special, but it’s probably a bit closer to the whole assessing players based on their goal difference impact than what I’ve showcased so far.

I want to have a look at each player’s importance for his respective team. In other words, how reliant are Wolves on Pedro Neto, for example, when it comes to delivering product in the final third?

To work this out, I’ve gathered the non-penalty xG posted by each team per match over the past season. Stay with me here. Wolves posted 1.15 non-penalty xG per match last term, and Neto was responsible for 0.47 of that when he was on the pitch, based purely on the combined value of his shots and the shots that he created for his teammates.

So that means overall, Neto was responsible for about 40.9 per cent of the xG that Wolves created on average, which is pretty good. He was carrying the load for his manager, winning points, but how does the Portuguese talisman stack up against everybody else in the sample? You’ll find the top 25 below.

Olise is basically Usain Bolt here. Streets ahead. When he’s on the pitch, he does a lot of the heavy lifting for Crystal Palace when it comes to the stuff that matters. He shoulders about 60 per cent of the load in attack.

The Eagles forward is followed by a few familar faces, including Leão and Kvaratskhelia, with Mbeumo helping Brentford quite a lot. The player ranked at the very bottom in 36th place? Bakayoko, which was a surprise but perhaps highlights a flaw attached to the metric.

PSV Eindhoven had an incredible season and created loads to such an extent that Bakayoko was good but not that important as an individual. The same likely applies to Musiala, who also failed to make the top 25. Palace, by contrast, are know for being a bit of a one or two-man team.

Interesting stuff. In the next edition of this series — coming later this week — I’m going to make the sample of 36 players smaller based on the evidence above. At this point, I think we know enough about certain options to rule them out.

Once we’ve got more of a shortlist in place, we can delve deeper into each individual with a specific look at which options are realistically attainable for Liverpool this summer.