LaLiga Part Two: The stats don't lie.
We're crunching the numbers ahead of the season's second big kick-off.
Data analysis in football isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but the underlying numbers, more often than not, tend to have a funny way of balancing out.
It’s easy to get carried away, and indeed misled, with pass maps and per nineties. Tread carefully, however, and the predictive powers of the modern football metric can uncover hidden trends, even amidst the chaos of this year’s upside-down campaign.
Today, we’re dusting off the spreadsheets to see what we can find.
Sensational shot-stoppers
LaLiga has long been renowned for its strength in depth between the sticks, and this season’s save statistics tell us that some of the best keepers continue to reside towards the bottom of the table.
Elche’s Édgar Badía has once again established himself, despite his side’s torrid season, with his 60 saves only bettered by two goalkeepers in Europe’s Top Five Leagues, while Jeremías Ledesma of Cádiz finds himself only four stops behind.
Further, only Alisson can boast a better ‘Post-Shot Expected Goals minus Goals Allowed’ figure than Badía, a metric that compares the Expected Goals value of every shot on target faced, against the number of goals conceded. Rayo’s Stole Dimitrievski, Betis’s Rui Silva, and Mallorca’s Predrag Rajković also rank highly in this regard.
Few come close to Badía, however, having saved his side an estimated 5.2 goals already this campaign. You dread to think where Elche would be without the 30-year-old, given that they only have four points, even with his heroics between the sticks….
Underrated creators
It’s not often that we see a non-Barcelona, Real Madrid or Atlético Madrid player rank so impressively in the LaLiga passing tables, but Girona’s Aleix García is going toe-to-toe with some of the best creative midfielders on the planet this season.
Not only is the former Manchester City man one of just three players to attempt over 900 passes in the opening 14 games, but his 94 crosses are also a league high, while his Expected Assists (xA) value of 3.6 can only be matched by Ousmane Dembélé. He also leads the way with 36 key passes, along with 70 shot-creating actions, 30 of those coming from dead-ball situations, almost double that of anyone else in the Spanish top-flight.
Another player perhaps slipping under the radar is Osasuna’s Moi Gómez, ranking fifth for key passes, and fourth for xA and shot-creating actions, while both Sergi Darder and Mikel Merino also impress.
Interestingly, the latter leads the way for xA over-performance, having registered six assists from an expected value of 2.3. Conversely, Gómez has only provided one assist from an xA of 2.6, suggesting that there is more to come from Moi before the season is out.
Clinical finishers
Outperforming your Expected Goals (xG) figure can mean one of two things; either you’re in fantastic form, or you’re a fantastic striker. For Iago Aspas, it’s almost definitely the latter.
The Galician goal machine has already scored seven times from an expected value of 3.6 this campaign, only behind Fede Valverde in terms of his +3.4 xG over-performance.
Across the last six seasons, however, Aspas has netted around 20 goals more than the quality of his chances would suggest, including a +8.1 xG over-performance in 2018, proving that there is little fortune involved in his freakish finishing, even as he approaches 36 years of age.
A striker for whom it’s slightly harder to tell is Gorka Guruzeta, who has found the back of the net every 40 minutes for Athletic Club so far this campaign.
In just 198 minutes, the former Amorebieta striker has managed five sensationally-struck goals from an xG of just 1.7, with a swivelling snapshot at Cádiz arguably the pick of the bunch. Just how sustainable this remarkable efficiency in front of goal will prove to be, remains to be seen.
Finally, on the other end of the spectrum, 20-year-old Ansu Fati has dipped slightly below his usual sky-high standards, having scored nearly two goals fewer than the quality of his chances would suggest.
Barcelona’s prodigious finisher had scored a remarkable 15 goals from 7.8 xG before the start of this season, including seven strikes when he was just 16 years of age.
Nonetheless, while injuries haven’t allowed the youngster to kick on as freely as Xavi may have liked, Fati is still, clearly, one of the best players in world football in terms of getting into dangerous positions. This season, he has averaged 1.09 xG+xA per 90 minutes, excluding penalties, more than anyone in Europe’s Top Five Leagues, including Kylian Mbappé, Erling Haaland and the rest.
A player who usually operates much more efficiently, still with that remarkable ability to make his way into the most valuable areas of the pitch, the data suggests that Ansu Fati could explode back onto the scene in 2023. A key factor in the title race perhaps? Only time will tell.