Forrest is near to completing a stellar season and has just collected the Ladbrokes Premiership Player of the Year. This is added to the PFA Scotland Player of the Year, Scottish Football Writers Player of the Year, the Scottish Football Writers International Player of the Year and finally, but most importantly, the Celtic By Numbers Player of the Year. Phew! That’s a lorra POTY!
Forrest, alongside Edouard and Sinclair, has formed the main attacking threat for Celtic this season. A look at their respective Scoring Contributions (Goals and Assists) tells us this.
Absolute values don’t tell the full story as regular readers will know. But what I want to concentrate on here is the notion of consistency. Consistency is something managers and supporters alike demand. But how can you measure it?
With attacking players, we can look at Expected Scoring Contribution as a more reliable guide to what the player would have been expected to achieve given the vagaries and luck involved in the actual outcome.
Expected Scoring Contribution (xSC) is the sum of Expected Goals (xG) and Expected Assists (xA).
To assess consistency, I have plotted each players’ xSC per match played over the season.
To measure consistency, using a simple Standard Deviation across the xSC per match results in the following:
Here, low is good – that is: the value spread for Forrest deviates from the mean less than the other players. His range of xSC’s are less spread out, in other words. It is a basic test of the consistency of his numbers to his average.
Forrest’s performances over 51 appearances have been the most consistent of the main attacking players this season.
Another reason for his groaning trophy cabinet!