By Sean O'Connor
With some recent blog posts examining matters relating to the Premier League, this blog post will continue this theme, focusing on Premier League goal scorers and their efficiency in front goal. Data has the ability to provide illuminating insights into player performance and with that in mind I have collected information on all Premier League goal scorers (as of 19/04/2019). This post examines 202 separate Premier League goal scorers and plots the relationship between goals per game and shots per game.
The scatter plot below examines this relationship. On average these players score 0.15 goals per game (Red line) and have 1.2 shots per game (Green line). Therefore, individuals found to the right of the red line have on average, more goals per game then the average Premier League scorer. While those found above the green line on average have more shots per game then the average Premier League goal scorer.
To further examine shots efficiency we break our scatter plot into four quadrants. To summarise simply:
Top left quadrant as those players who “take more shots but score fewer goals”.
Bottom left quadrant as those players who “take less shots and score fewer goals”.
Top right quadrant as those players who “take more shots and score more goals”.
Bottom right quadrant as those players who “take less shots and score more goals”
With some recent blog posts examining matters relating to the Premier League, this blog post will continue this theme, focusing on Premier League goal scorers and their efficiency in front goal. Data has the ability to provide illuminating insights into player performance and with that in mind I have collected information on all Premier League goal scorers (as of 19/04/2019). This post examines 202 separate Premier League goal scorers and plots the relationship between goals per game and shots per game.
The scatter plot below examines this relationship. On average these players score 0.15 goals per game (Red line) and have 1.2 shots per game (Green line). Therefore, individuals found to the right of the red line have on average, more goals per game then the average Premier League scorer. While those found above the green line on average have more shots per game then the average Premier League goal scorer.
To further examine shots efficiency we break our scatter plot into four quadrants. To summarise simply:
Top left quadrant as those players who “take more shots but score fewer goals”.
Bottom left quadrant as those players who “take less shots and score fewer goals”.
Top right quadrant as those players who “take more shots and score more goals”.
Bottom right quadrant as those players who “take less shots and score more goals”
Examining the graph above, much of the findings would not be a surprise to people. The Premier League’s top goalscorers are all found in the top right quadrant (Kane, Salah, Aguero etc.) What I find interesting however, are the players in the top left and bottom right quadrants. We see that Wolves' Ruben Neves, and Chelsea’s Willian take quite a lot of shots per game, but these don’t pay off in terms of goals. In contrast, Loftus-Cheek, James Ward-Prowse are much more efficient in front of goals, a finding that many people may not be aware of.
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