I finally finished the data work I wanted to do for transfer shopping pieces, and then I got so excited about the top scorer in Europe 09-13 stuff that I had had to post that first. However, the point of all this was an attempt to build some useful baselines. What type of performance qualifies as elite? Obviously merging words and numbers is tricky, but we’re basically looking at the best of the best in terms of football performance.
The data set I have access to runs from 2009-10 through the current season and covers the big 5 leagues in Europe. For the next few days, I’m mostly going to just post data from the top tiers of performers across Europe in particular seasons so that we have reference points to determine the awesome from the good from the merely average.
Obviously one of the complications you run into is that different leagues have different strengths, and different teams (particularly Real Madrid and Barcelona) have incredible competitive advantages that seem to enhance performance of all their players. The Eredivisie (not in the current data set) has the highest scoring rate in Europe, while Ligue 1 has the lowest. Regardless, we don’t have an objective way of discounting this yet, so I’ll simply break things into league-based data dumps and for now you can make your own determinations.
Goals per 90
I covered this briefly yesterday, but it bears repeating.
Goals are the most basic scoring stat we have. However, just looking at the total goals a player has at the end of the season discounts one particularly important element: playing time. Players that play more should contribute more in rate stats. This is why Benjamin Pugsley and I usually try to normalize rate stats into per 90s. It controls for total playing time (including time missed due to injury or sub appearances), which can be particularly useful when it comes to younger players who may not be full members of the first team yet.
Another element that we want to “fix” here is goal inflation via penalty. Penalty kicks are generally converted at a 76% rate, year after year, and it doesn’t require an expert in goalscoring to do this. (Example: there have been a number of goalkeepers over the years who were designated penalty takers for their teams.) In short, it’s a different skill than normal goal scoring. Thus I’ve done my best to filter this out of the goal scoring information we’re looking at. We care more about guys who are banging them home from everywhere but the penalty spot.
Cutoffs
Going into this, I kind of had the running assumption that .4 goals per90 is the cutoff for being a useful top-level forward that is expected to score goals. Multiply .4 across 38 matches, and you get 15 goals a season – a good, but not great goal tally. (It’s probably great for wide players and midfielders, but that’s another article for another time.) At a later date, I’ll re-slice the data set into standard deviations and the like to get a real cutoff point, but for now let’s stay a bit more casual.
In 2009-10, there were 98 players who scored goals at a rate of .4/90 or better, or just under 20 per league. That seems like a reasonable number. It’s not something everyone can do, but it does indicate a high level of contribution. The tallies for players meeting this threshold across the leagues in each year is
2010: 98
2011: 99
2012: 104
2013: 116
Remove the penalty goals from those numbers, and you end up with
2010: 76
2011: 83
2012: 81
2013: 92
Which strips out about 20-25% of the contenders per year on average.
But what about elite? Where is the elite level of goalscoring?
My first guess was around .6, or 50% more than the “useful” metric. Multiply it out by a full season and it delivers nearly 24 goals from 38 matches. That us a huge number and would put any player with that rate near the top of their league in scoring almost every single year.
Again, a casual look at the numbers seems to bear this out. Number of players for each year meeting this threshold are as follows:
2010: 18
2011: 20
2012: 19
2013: 20
So the surface breakdown of categories goes a bit like this:
.4 to .49 non-penalty goals per 90: Good.
.5 to .59 non-penalty goals per 90: Very good.
.6 to .79 non-penalty goals per 90: Probable Top 20 in Europe
.8 or above non-penalty goals per 90: Probable Top 5 in Europe
[Note: These divisions aren’t perfect, and should definitely be adjusted a bit for younger players, as you expect their performance to increase until they hit their peak. If a younger player (say 22 or under) is putting up numbers in these brackets, they are probably pretty special.
EPL 09-10
Player Team 90Mins G NPG G90 NPG90
Fernando Torres Liverpool 19.06 18 18 0.9446 0.9446
Didier Drogba Chelsea 30.82 29 28 0.9409 0.9084
Wayne Rooney Manchester United 30.26 26 22 0.8593 0.7271
Jermain Defoe Tottenham 28.52 18 17 0.6311 0.596
Emmanuel Adebayor Manchester City 24.58 14 0.5696 0.5696
Carlos Tévez Manchester City 31.87 23 18 0.7218 0.5649
Dimitar Berbatov Manchester United 23.29 12 0.5153 0.5153
Darren Bent Sunderland 37.64 24 19 0.6375 0.5047
Francesc Fábregas Arsenal 24.37 15 12 0.6156 0.4925
Florent Malouda Chelsea 25.59 12 0.469 0.469
Aruna Dindane Portsmouth 16.22 8 7 0.4932 0.4315
Louis Saha Everton 25.87 13 11 0.5026 0.4253
Andrey Arshavin Arsenal 25.17 10 0.3974 0.3974
LaLiga 09-10
Player Team 90Mins G NPG G90 NPG90
Lionel Messi Barcelona 31.5556 34 33 1.0775 1.0458
Gonzalo Higuaín Real Madrid 26.6444 27 27 1.0133 1.0133
Cristiano Ronaldo Real Madrid 27.4444 26 22 0.9474 0.8016
Luís Fabiano Sevilla 18.2667 15 14 0.8212 0.7664
Zlatan Ibrahimovic Barcelona 22.6 16 14 0.708 0.6195
David Villa Valencia 30.1111 21 18 0.6974 0.5978
Karim Benzema Real Madrid 14.4889 8 0.5521 0.5521
Diego Forlán Atletico Madrid 28.6 18 15 0.6294 0.5245
Roberto Soldado Getafe 25.2 16 13 0.6349 0.5159
Pedro Barcelona 23.5444 12 0.5097 0.5097
Frederic Kanouté Sevilla 19.8444 12 10 0.6047 0.5039
Sergio Agüero Atletico Madrid 24.4556 12 0.4907 0.4907
Pablo Osvaldo Espanyol 20.5556 10 0.4865 0.4865
Joseba Llorente Villarreal 19.6778 9 0.4574 0.4574
Riki Deportivo La Coruna 16.6222 8 7 0.4813 0.4211
Walter Pandiani Osasuna 26.8444 11 0.4098 0.4098
Nilmar Villarreal 27.4778 11 0.4003 0.4003
Álvaro Negredo Sevilla 22.6889 11 9 0.4848 0.3967
Bundesliga 09-10
Player Team 90Mins G NPG G90 NPG90
Arjen Robben Bayern Munich 19.7556 16 14 0.8099 0.7087
Claudio Pizarro Werder Bremen 23.6667 16 0.6761 0.6761
Cacau VfB Stuttgart 19.3333 13 0.6724 0.6724
Lucas Barrios Borussia Dortmund 29.1333 19 0.6522 0.6522
Edin Dzeko Wolfsburg 33.3444 22 20 0.6598 0.5998
Stefan Kießling Bayer Leverkusen 32.4556 21 19 0.647 0.5854
Kevin Kuranyi Schalke 04 31.1111 18 0.5786 0.5786
Ivica Olic Bayern Munich 19.9333 11 0.5518 0.5518
Ciprian Marica VfB Stuttgart 16.8778 10 9 0.5925 0.5332
Albert Bunjaku Nurnberg 24.0667 12 0.4986 0.4986
Hugo Almeida Werder Bremen 14.9111 7 0.4694 0.4694
Mario Gomez Bayern Munich 21.4778 10 0.4656 0.4656
Thomas Müller Bayern Munich 29.3778 13 0.4425 0.4425
Eren Derdiyok Bayer Leverkusen 29.0556 12 0.413 0.413
Adrián Ramos Hertha Berlin 24.7889 10 0.4034 0.4034
Didier Ya Konan Hannover 96 22.3889 9 0.402 0.402
SerieA 09-10
Player Team 90Mins G NPG G90 NPG90
Antonio Di Natale Udinese 33.4667 29 23 0.8665 0.6873
Maxi López Catania 15.6556 11 10 0.7026 0.6388
Alexandre Pato AC Milan 20.0333 12 0.599 0.599
Mario Balotelli Inter 15.4444 9 0.5827 0.5827
Diego Milito Inter 31.9889 22 18 0.6877 0.5627
Marco Borriello AC Milan 24.5444 14 13 0.5704 0.5297
Valeri Bojinov Parma 15.6667 8 0.5106 0.5106
Emanuele Calaiò Siena 16.8222 8 0.4756 0.4756
Davide Lanzafame Parma 14.9667 7 0.4677 0.4677
Sergio Floccari Genoa 21.4889 12 10 0.5584 0.4654
Fabrizio Miccoli Palermo 28.8 19 13 0.6597 0.4514
Francesco Totti Roma 19.9778 14 9 0.7008 0.4505
Giampaolo Pazzini Sampdoria 35.9556 19 16 0.5284 0.445
Alberto Gilardino Fiorentina 32.6778 15 14 0.459 0.4284
Mirko Vucinic Roma 28.3333 14 12 0.4941 0.4235
Adailton Bologna 21.7889 10 9 0.4589 0.4131
Simone Tiribocchi Atalanta 27.5778 11 0.3989 0.3989
Marco Di Vaio Bologna 25.2 12 10 0.4762 0.3968
French 09-10
Player Team 90Mins G NPG G90 NPG90
Mevlut Erding Paris Saint Germain 26.9444 15 0.5567 0.5567
Mamadou Niang Marseille 27.6778 18 15 0.6503 0.542
Ireneusz Jelen Auxerre 26.9444 14 0.5196 0.5196
Kevin Gameiro Lorient 33.2444 17 0.5114 0.5114
Pierre-Alain Frau Lille 23.6 13 12 0.5508 0.5085
Gervinho Lille 27.4556 13 0.4735 0.4735
Asamoah Gyan Rennes 23.3222 13 11 0.5574 0.4717
Michel Bastos Lyon 21.8889 10 0.4569 0.4569
Bafétimbi Gomis Lyon 23.0444 10 0.4339 0.4339
Lisandro López Lyon 28.0556 15 12 0.5347 0.4277
Emmanuel Rivière Saint Etienne 19.2333 8 0.4159 0.4159
Check out Emmanuel Riviere sneaking in there at the bottom of the French table. He was 19 at the time - now plays for Monaco.
Anyway, I'll keep doing these more complete scoring charts for the next few days so the data is out there, and next week I'll also start providing transfer recommendations for EPL squads.