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Looking ahead and planning for the future, is essential, but so is to look back in time and appreciate the efforts of those who have performed at the highest level for a long time. This piece looks to highlight the contribution of players who have been lethal in front of goal, converting opportunities and putting games to bed through their above average-finishing.
The timeline for this list consists of all games played over the seasons 2014 to 2019 and the first 19 games of the EPL season. Therefore, at max, any player in this list could have played a total of 38 (total games in an EPL season) multiplied by 5 (5 because of the following 5 seasons - 2014/15, 2015/16, 2016/17, 2017/18, 2018/19) + 19, i.e. 38*5+19=209 games. Also, out of the top 5 leagues, the German league plays 34 games a year and therefore the maximum a player in that league could have played is 34*5+17=187 games, about 16830 minutes whereas for an EPL player it would be 18810 minutes.
For a player to appear in this list, he would have had to have scored more than 50 goals over the 5 and a half seasons, a tall ask indeed, but this helps remove the outliers and inconsistent performers. Additionally, the player would have had to play for more than 6000 minutes over the same period. This ensures that the player regularly featured for his team in their domestic league bid for excellence.
Furthermore, only non-penalty goals have been considered while curating this list. The stringent constraints described above produce a list of 57 attackers from the top 5 leagues that consistently scored goals over the aforementioned seasons.
Previously, it was difficult to measure really how effective an attacker was in front of goal. Then expected goals came into the picture. xG, as it is commonly referred to, represents the likelihood of a shot ending up in the back of the net using variables such as ‘Assist Type’, ‘Header/Foot’, whether it was a ‘Big Chance’ and the ‘Angle and Distance’ from goal. Opta debunks this parameter rather flawlessly. xG or Expected Goals play a central role in discerning the constituents of this list.
A player that eclipses his xG stat is generally considered a lethal finisher, but it wouldn’t be fair to compare the stat directly. If player A plays more games than Player B, in all likeliness, he would have a higher xG value, purely because he was on the pitch for more minutes. In case you were curious, if we were to just sort npxG (non-penalty expected goals) in descending order, the usual suspects would constitute the top 5. 5th would be Aubameyang, 4th Suarez, then Messi, Ronaldo and first would be Lewandowski with 138.68 npxG, but that’s only because all these players have played more than 14500 minutes each.
This would defeat the purpose. It would only make sense if we were to find out which players scored more goals than they should have, i.e. had the largest difference between their npg (non-penalty goals) and their npxG (non-penalty expected Goals). By doing this we get a metric we can call Net Outperformed npxG (non-penalty expected goals) or Net onpxG
Net onpxG = npg (actual np) – npxG (number of goals they should have ideally scored)
To further refine this metric, we can go ahead and divide each player’s Net onpxG metric by ‘Total Mins’ played, for each player to get a metric we can label as Net onpxG/Total_Mins. We can then multiply this value by 90 to get Net onpxG/90 or Net onpxG Per 90.
Net onpxG Per 90 = (Net onpxG/Total Mins played) X 90
This doesn’t favour any player just because they’ve played more than another player. Now enough of this, let’s just get to it.
#5 Paco Alcácer – Net onpxG Per 90 – 0.121
Paco Alcácer has seen more than most players would have by the time they reach the age of 26. Having lost his father 18 days before his 18th birthday, Paco has done a commendable job in keeping his career on track, moving from boyhood club Valencia to the superpower that FC Barcelona is now. He has had a few crests and troughs in his life.
In his last two seasons at Valencia (2014-16), he hit double figures for goals scored and was subsequently signed by the footballing (term coined by Arsene Wenger) behemoth Barcelona. Signing for Barcelona must have surely been the ‘crest’ but everything he did post this, in the revered Barcelona jersey was the trough in his fledgeling career.
In 2018, he signed for Dortmund on loan and set a new Bundesliga record for the most goals scored by a substitute in a single campaign. His stats in the Bundesliga at the end of the 2018/19 campaign read: Starts-11, Substitute Appearances-15, Goals Scored-18. Since the 2014/15 season, Alcacer has had some part to play in 120 games (starts + substitute appearances). He’s played 6993 minutes in those 120 games, appearing from the bench more often than not.
Notwithstanding his rare starts, his presence has had serious ramifications for opposition defences. Over the last 5 seasons, he took 189 shots scoring 46 goals, a lethal return of a goal every 4.11 shots, the 3rd lowest total of Shots/Goals by any player in the top 5 leagues, over the last 5 seasons (having shots greater than 150). He has scored 48 non-penalty goals while his npxG was only 38.6 goals, giving him a Net onpxG Per 90 of 0.121.
#4 Zlatan Ibrahimović – Net onpxG Per 90 – 0.133
Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Surprised to see him here? We shouldn’t be, it’s Zlatan after all. Having been on the wrong side of 30 since a while hasn’t stopped Zlatan from doing what Zlatan does. Although his MLS stats aren’t considered when it comes to this list, they make for a compelling read. 52 games, 11 assists, 48 goals. All of was after his 36th birthday. All of this was after recovering from a career-threatening injury at the age of 35. But as Zlatan says, “lions don’t recover like humans do”, and he was right. He had just taken 7 months to recover from an injury that usually takes 9 months, that too in his mid-30s, a remarkable feat.
As per OptaJoe, Zlatan has scored 157 goals after his 30th birthday. No one has scored more in this decade while in the same age group. He has managed to not only play a lot post his serious injury, but also be a force to reckon with, so much so that he has just returned to play for a team in the top 5 leagues.
AC Milan, the team that Zlatan signed for, is in dire need of goals. They were averaging 1.34 goals per game last season in Serie A but average less than a goal a game this season (0.9). AC Milan’s per-game shot count of 15.42 per game has also fallen to 14.7 shots per game, as per Whoscored, but this is something Zlatan can surely help with. Since the 2014/15 season, he has taken 4.58 shots per 90 minutes. That’s the 6th highest out of the 1226 players who have played more than 6000 minutes.
Getting back to this list, Zlatan has scored 59 npg (non-penalty goals) from an npxG (non-penalty expected goals) of 48.56 in the 7087 minutes he has played in the top 5 leagues since the 2014/15 season, giving him the 4th highest Net onpxG Per 90 of all players.
#3 Son Heung-Min – Net onpxG Per 90 – 0.136
All Arsenal fans have at one point or another come across a compilation of players 'that got away'. Players that could have featured in the famous red and white but due to a variety of reasons didn't end up playing for Arsenal Football Club. Reportedly, Son Heung-min was one of them. It must pain to watch him do so well in the Premier League having missed out on him, but do this well with their arch-rivals! Must hurt, eh?
Son has the deadly combination of pace and finishing that not many players have. Son is one of only 30 players to have scored more than 50 non-penalty goals while assisting more than 25 since the 2014/15 season, the season he had just turned 22. Out of all the 30 players who make it to the above list, Son has played the 3rd fewest minutes. Over the last 5 seasons, Son Heung-Min has always finished the season with an average Whoscored rating of more than 6.99. Anyone who is acquainted with Whoscored knows hows consistent you have to be for such a feat
He has been a real asset to the Spurs team. His blistering pace can unsettle defences and aid during counter-attacks while his exquisite close control facilitates in unlocking staunch defences. I can imagine Son being a coach’s favourite player purely because of the work ethic instilled in him due to his Asian lineage. His determination to succeed is so intense that he agreed to his father’s sentiment to not marry until he retires so that he can concentrate solely on football.
From Aug 2018 to March 2019, Opta said that Son was scoring with 19.3% of his Premier League shots, his most clinical return in the PL ever. In terms of this list, Son has scored 58 non-penalty goals from the start of the 2014/15 PL season. That’s 17 more goals than he should have scored because his npxG is a paltry 40.97. That speaks volumes about his ability to find the right spot to bury the ball while in front of goal, something he has done consistently since signing for Tottenham in 2015.
#2 Antoine Griezmann - Net onpxG Per 90 – 0.148
There have been times when this player was single-handedly responsible for carrying his team across the line. Now part of a much larger, well-oiled machine Antoine Griezmann hasn’t exactly hit the ground running. Since signing for Barcelona, he’s had many people sit on his back, but he’s been through a similar phase before and he came out of it unscathed. StatDNA, a company that Arsenal had purchased outright to help with player purchases and data acquisition, had thought that Griezmann's ’metrics were not overly impressive’ when Arsene Wenger mentioned his name as a potential signing.
Now, of course, Arsenal Football Club probably regret it, just as they do with other players who have gone on to leave their massive footprints all over the globe. Griezmann on his part has managed to drown out all the noise and has seemingly turned a corner when it comes to his Barcelona career. Slowly, but steadily, he has started winning over the Barcelona fans, who are historically, a tough sell. He has scored 3 goals in his last 4 La Liga appearances.
A return of 7 goals and 4 assists from his 16 starts with Barcelona is by no means an unhealthy return but is looked down upon solely due to the lofty returns that viewers have come to expect from him. Having played his last 5 full seasons in a team like Atletico Madrid has probably made him the clinical finisher he is. Regularly put in a sink or swim scenario, if Atletico strikers don’t finish the few opportunities they get in front of goal, they’ll probably end up drawing all their games due to their team’s defensive build.
Along with his deadly finishing, his congenital mindset to run into the ground, bred into his system by the fitness coach who makes players run until they vomit, could serve Griezmann well as fans like nothing more than a player's commitment to the team’s greater good.
Not the first name that comes to mind when we think of a clinical finisher, Griezmann has comprehensively eclipsed his npxG. As far as pure stats, Griezmann has played 15765 minutes and scored 95 np goals from an npxG of 69 goals, an astonishing difference of 26 goals. This gives him a Net onpxG Per 90 of 0.148, which means that on an average, for every 90 minutes he plays, Griezmann is outdoing his ‘Expected Goals’ stats by 0.148, the 2nd highest amongst all players within the aforementioned constraints.
#1 Lionel Messi – Net onpxG Per 90 - 0.223
It had to be him. Arguably the best player to have ever played this game, Lionel Messi is in a league of his own. 2nd placed Griezmann, who is now his teammate, is far behind with a Net onpxG Per 90 of 0.148. It’s not that Griezmann’s stats are bad, they’re not, but no one even comes close to Messi. In all probability, no one ever will.
Even an assembled monster called Barcelona hasn’t been able to keep up with his excellence. I say this because, since the 2014/15 season, Messi should have an xA or expected Assists count of 83.9 assists (just like expected goals, there is a metric called expected assists - video link) but ended up with 'just' 74. Put another way, even Barcelona players are finding it hard to keep up with him.
He has scored 167 non-penalty goals in the same timeframe, Suarez and Ronaldo come in 2nd with 132 goals each. Most of what Barcelona does well goes through this footballing freak. He takes an average 5.36 shots Per 90, the 2nd most Per 90 by any player but these numbers are little inflated because he’s also on free-kick duty for his club (213 out of his 936 shots were from free-kicks and he's scored a maddening 24 free-kicks from his 213 shots).
He has 461 key passes to his name, the most by any player, again. The list can go on and on, but with regards to this curated list (and most others), Messi comes in at 1st with 167 np goals even though his npxG put him at 'only' 128. The difference is of 39 goals. 39 goals over almost 5 and a half seasons. That means, only by virtue of his extraordinary finishing, Messi contributes 7 more goals, per season, than any player in his boots should ideally have.
P.S. There could be a much better way to measure just how clinical a player is in front of goal, but this seemed like a good one considering the data I could get access to. If anyone does have another metric in mind, please do let me know and I’ll try compiling a list with that stat in mind.
Sources: www.understat.com
