Premier League stats: what they reveal about the season so far

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/mar/30/premier-league-stats-chelsea-manchester-united

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1) Has Eriksen’s work rate passed everyone by?

For many, Tottenham’s Christian Eriksen is a free-kick taker, a flair player with an eye for a gorgeous pass or exquisite shot but who is too slight and who too frequently drifts in and out of games. It’s an unfair reputation and one he appears to have earned since arriving for £11m as part of the post-Gareth Bale splurge. André Villas-Boas saw him as a creative player – and used him as such – but he was too often unfit. Tim Sherwood frequently put him on the wing, not his best position, and, again, the impression was that his talent was too ephemeral.

The current Tottenham manager, Mauricio Pochettino, however, has found something neither of those predecessors could unearth: according to EA Sports Player Performance Index stats, Eriksen is one of the hardest-working players in the Premier League. He is second only to Burnley’s George Boyd in metres covered this season (Eriksen has run 338,235 metres – 210 miles – in league games) and runs an average of 11,275 metres a game. No other Tottenham player makes it into the top 20 and, although that is possibly because Pochettino’s pressing game requires positional nous rather than lung-busting to-and-fro running, it does mean that no other Spurs player is influencing the game at both ends of the pitch as much as Eriksen.

2) Do Burnley have the fitness to match their endeavour?

As a team, Burnley are running everywhere all the time. Boyd is arguably the league’s hardest worker, topping the charts for distance covered (338,837 metres), average distance per game (12,101 metres or nearly eight miles) and the number of sprints this season (2,014). Boyd is joined near the top of those charts by his team-mates Scott Arfield, David Jones and Kieran Trippier, who are all among the 20 players who have run the furthest this season.

Stats show that Burnley are the team most likely to pass long and third least likely to pass short, which means that – against the perceived wisdom – it is the players who are doing the work, not the ball, since they are forever having to chase after the thing. Given Burnley have used only 23 players this season (the second fewest after Chelsea), is their manager, Sean Dyche, expecting a small squad to do too much running, do they have the fitness to cope in the season’s run-in and will it lead to them tiring more quickly than their fellow relegation battlers?

3) Boring Chelsea?

It has long been thought that Roman Abramovich wants Chelsea to play more attractive football while still maintaining their success. When José Mourinho was brought back to the club last season, it seemed likely that Abramovich would see the success but without the beauty to go with it. The owner is supposed to want his side to play short-passing, attacking and shot-heavy football – not the sort of thing that the pragmatic, defence-minded Mourinho tends to produce.

But although nobody would argue that Chelsea are playing like Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona at the moment, it is clear that the squad is attempting to achieve Abramovich’s apparent wishes. This season Chelsea have attempted the fourth-most short passes in the league, electing to pass short 88.76% of the time and long only 11.24%. They have the third-highest pass accuracy rate, have attempted the third-fewest long passes (behind Arsenal and Manchester City) and have had the joint second-most shots (tied with Arsenal and behind Manchester City in first). Meanwhile, the side feature the two most creative players in the league in Eden Hazard and Cesc Fàbregas, who have created 158 goalscoring chances for their team-mates between them. Boring, defensive Mourinho? Not completely true.

4) But are Chelsea heading for burnout?

Mourinho likes a small squad with a spine to it. In his first spell at Chelsea, he famously had his “untouchables” – players such as Claude Makélélé, Michael Essien, John Terry, Frank Lampard, Michael Ballack, Ashley Cole, Ricardo Carvalho, Didier Drogba and Petr Cech whom he would pick every week. This season Mourinho is doing something similar and Chelsea have used only 22 players, the fewest of any Premier League club, and the manager has picked only 20 different starting players – the joint fewest alongside Burnley.

Mourinho relies on certain players and expects them to perform week-in, week-out – John Terry has played every single minute of the club’s Premier League games this season – and he expects them to work. Hazard, Fàbregas and Nemanja Matic are among the 20 players who have covered the most ground in the league this season, with Matic and Fàbregas having an average of 7.2 miles a game each. Meanwhile, Matic has nine yellow cards and a red this season (the joint worst disciplinary record), while Fàbregas has nine yellows (joint second-worst, with Ciaran Clark and Joey Barton) which suggests, among other things, a fully committed approach. But Fàbregas’s and Matic’s form has dipped of late. Can they and the rest of the squad sustain their levels with such a wholehearted game, or does Mourinho need to rotate more in future?

5) Has Mata been unfairly sidelined?

Passing accuracy is one of those stats that is skewed by players’ positions. Defenders and defensive midfielders frequently have high passing accuracy rates because, often, they play shorter, sideways passes under less pressure from the opposition. Attacking players must take more risks in order to create chances and have less time to do so as they are closed down more often. So for Samir Nasri and Juan Mata to be two of the six most accurate passers in the league, among a host of defensive midfielders and defenders, is impressive.

Louis van Gaal has been unsure of his best side – Manchester United have used 32 players this season, the most in the Premier League – but perhaps one player should have been on the pitch more often. The perception has been that Mata has had a poor season, which has only recently come to life against Liverpool. It is perhaps why he has played for only 1,662 minutes of the 2,700 of Manchester United’s Premier League season. The numbers, however, suggest he has been one of United’s best performers. With passing accuracy of 89.65% and a shot conversion rate of 38.89% (joint best in the league alongside Jonathan Walters), should Mata be playing more often?

Manchester United do not feature a single player in the top 10 of the chances created list (Chelsea, Manchester City and Arsenal have two each, while Tottenham, Liverpool, West Ham and Southampton each have one). If Mata had played more this season, could he have been that missing element of creativity for Van Gaal?

6) Kane is England’s most reliable striker – but he’s not got much competition

In terms of numbers alone, Stoke’s Walters, Newcastle’s Papiss Cissé and Chelsea’s Diego Costa are the forwards most likely to score from the chances they are offered. Harry Kane comes fifth on the list, scoring 31.15% of the time he is afforded the chance. That puts him on a par with Costa (33.33%) and Arsenal’s Olivier Giroud (31.71%), which is certainly nothing to be sniffed at. But in recent months Danny Ings, Charlie Austin and Saido Berahino have been touted as potential England strikers, and Wayne Rooney remains the country’s captain. Not one of them has a shot conversion rate better than 27.5% (Rooney). It’s no better elsewhere: Danny Welbeck has the third-worst shot conversion rate in the league and Daniel Sturridge, Ings and the former England strikers Peter Crouch and Andy Carroll are also among the top flight’s 20 worst, which doesn’t bode well.

Bafétimbi Gomis, Enner Valencia, Graziano Pellè, Romelu Lukaku, Edin Dzeko and Wilfried Bony are others who need to find more composure in front of goal. Then again, how much does shot conversion rate matter? Sergio Agüero has scored 17 goals this season and is not in the top-20 list.

7) Who is the best Premier League goalkeeper – according to the numbers?

It is sometimes hard to draw conclusions from goalkeeping stats. Robert Green, for example, has made the most saves in the Premier League this season with 109. So he must be the best shot-stopper in the league, right? But his club, Queens Park Rangers, have also conceded the most goals in the Premier League this season, having let in 54. So he must be the worst goalkeeper in the league, right? Well, neither.

What it does point to, though, is that QPR have the worst defence in the league since they have let in the most goals this season and have forced their goalkeeper into making more saves than anyone else. If Green were playing in front of better defenders, would he be one of the best in the league?

Finding the league’s best goalkeeper is hard to determine from the stats. To the eye, the best performers this season have been David de Gea, Thibaut Courtois, Joe Hart and Fraser Forster but De Gea outshines the lot when it comes to the numbers: he has made far more saves than Forster, Courtois and Hart, and has a better save percentage. But, on the other hand, he is playing behind a worse defence than the other three and has therefore been called on more often, thus boosting his numbers.

Finding the league’s worst goalkeeper is also tricky. Everton’s Tim Howard, Leicester City’s Kasper Schmeichel and Arsenal’s Wojciech Szczesny are at the bottom of the table showing most saves in the Premier League. But Szczesny has been out of the Arsenal side for a while now, Schmeichel was injured for three months and Howard missed January with a calf problem, meaning they have not had as many chances to make saves as others. Unfortunately for Howard and Schmeichel, though, the pair also have the worst save percentages in the league. Both might be playing in sides with poor defences but, unlike Rob Green, they are not helping out much between the sticks.

8) Who keeps referees the busiest?

Burnley’s Ashley Barnes finds himself in the unusual position of being one of the most fouled players in the Premier League at the same time as being the worst fouler. Essentially, if the Burnley man is on the pitch, the referee may as well keep the whistle handy. Yet, despite this, he only has four yellow cards to his name. He is rarely offside (only 0.3 times per game, on average) and so he racks up a series of low-level niggly fouls throughout each match – making him, if you are relegation struggler, exactly the sort of player you want on your side and not in the opposition.