Hot Property

The football analysis community on Twitter is a fertile ground for the exchange (or robbery) of ideas. In that spirit some work by Ashwin Raman (@thefutebolist ) caught my eye.

Ashwin (please follow him) used Shots In the Box and Key Passes (passes leading to a goal attempt plus assists) per 90 minutes to plot the output by forwards who are 21 or under in 2017/18 in the five major European leagues (England, Germany, France, Italy, Spain).

It illustrates neatly why Mbappe is so highly regarded (as Celtic supporters know to our cost from experience). It also provides some context as to the buzz around the likes of Bordeaux’s Malcom, and Leon Bailey of Bayer Leverkusen. Watchers of the English Premier League will recognise Gabriel Jesus, Richarlison, Marcus Rashford, Demarai Gray, Alex Iwobi and Tammy Abraham. (Note how few 21 and under play regularly in those leagues).

Abraham is interesting to me as he has had a similar career path to our own Dembele. I wrote about that here – Shooting Stars. This article similarly pilfered great work by @TiagoEstv. Which got me to thinking how our own 21 and under aged forward talent compares?

Qualifying players for Celtic are Dembele (striker) and Roberts (attacking midfielder).

Before showing where they plot some important caveats:

1. The 17/18 data includes ALL Celtic matches including Champions League – I suspect Ashwin’s data is league matches only;
2. In 17/18 Roberts fails the entry criteria as he has played 810 minutes compared to the 900 required;
3. The 16/17 data for both Roberts and Dembele shows Shots In Box90 for ALL Celtic matches;
4. The 16/17 data for both Roberts and Dembele shows Key Passes90 for SPFL matches ONLY;
5. The SPFL is obviously not a top 5 European league.

So, (*drumroll*) with that all cleared up, how do the young Hoops plot?

I’ve had to plot these manually and so for transparency, here are the data values:

Familiarity can sometimes breed, if not contempt, then certainly a diminished appreciation of what is in our midst. We consider Dembele to be having a relatively poor season yet development amongst young players is not a straight linear progression. Roberts has been injured for the bulk of the season yet still posts excellent numbers when called upon.

Dembele and Roberts should rightly be considered two of the more promising players of their age in Europe. These are only two metrics and the analysis have its imperfections as Ashwin acknowledges. I am not claiming Dembele or Roberts are “better” than the players on the chart. That’s too simplistic.

But the ability to create for others (Key Passes) and the ability to make good shot selection choices (remember Dembele is hitting the target with 47% of his shots this season) are sought after skills.

I hope we see a lot more of them in the Hoops.

This article was written with the aid of StrataData, which is property of Stratagem Technologies. StrataData powers the StrataBet Sports Trading Platform, in addition to StrataBet Premium Recommendations.