Saturday, May 25, 2013

Liverpool FC: BPL Player Performance Analysis

This is a follow up of the more general player performance analysis that I published before. Here, I focus on the performance in the Premier League and try to explore the performances in greater detail.

All the data mentioned here has been collected from the official Premier League website and I look at more parameters to get a more holistic view of the players' performances.

The following table gives a snapshot of the performances of all the players who made an appearance for Liverpool in the Premier League, and contains data about their Appearances (App), Starts (Sta), Goals Scored (Goa), Assists (Ass), Minutes Played (MP), Clean Sheets (CS), Own Goals Scored (OG), Penalties Saved (PSv), Penalties Scored (PS), Penalties Missed (PM), Match-winning Goals (GWG), Shots (S), Shot on Target (SOT), Fouls Faced (FF), Fouls Conceeded (FC), Yellow Cards (YC) and Red Cards (RC).


For my rating system, I decided to follow the following weights for each contribution a player had made, based on the position they play in, viz. forwards (FW), midfielders (MF), defenders (DF) and goalkeepers (GK).

The three most impressive players from the ratings are
  1. Luis Suarez (8.719 points/app, 0.097 points/minute played)
  2. Daniel Sturridge (7.695 points/app, 0.086 points/minute played)
  3. Philippe Coutinho (6.067 points/app, 0.085 points/minute played)
The most impressive young players to have made appearances this season are
  1. Jordan Ibe (6.800 points/app, 0.108 points/minute played)
  2. Raheem Sterling (4.736 points/app, 0.065 points/minute played)
  3. Andre Wisdom (3.339 points/app, 0.040 points/minute played)
Jordan Ibe has made just the one appearance and hence it can be safely assumed that his performances will have dipped to a lower level following more appearances. Also Suso, having made 14 Premier League appearances this season, has not contributed significantly, and has been peripheral to most games, often being substituted quite early, having played only 43 minutes per game on average.

The Liverpool skipper, Gerrard (4.555 points/app, 0.051 points/minute played) has racked up the second highest minutes played for the team, just behind Johnson, and its nice to see that both Gerrard and Agger (3221 and 3097 minutes played respectively) have been fit for large spells this season.

Perhaps it is not surprising that the most impactful players this season have been the trio who have been top on all most all statistics, and they will have to form the driving force behind Liverpool's push for a top 4 berth and a coveted Champions League spot next season.

You can download the analysis here.