Ederson’s Influence, Opta’s Player Radars, and Keeper Questions

Stat, Viz, Quiz is the Opta Analyst football newsletter. This week’s edition includes numbers on Ederson, the Opta Player Radars, and goalkeepers.

We hope you enjoyed our special editions of SVQ during Euro 2024. If you’re reading this, at least you came back for more, so it’s our duty to reward you.

So, in this post Euros/Copa America world, what are we to do?

Sure, we’d love to analyse the Polish Ekstraklasa or the Icelandic Úrvalsdeild, but we’ve got another completely 100% unique and fresh idea that we’re pretty sure no-one else is doing… transfer talk.

With the transfer window starting to heat up and rumours bouncing around left, right and centre, we thought we’d take a look at one big name being linked with a move this summer; namely, Manchester City goalkeeper Ederson. He’s been one of the most influential figures in recent Premier League history, and we examine what City could be losing.

In addition, if you haven’t had a play around with Opta’s Player Radars yet, we’re going to do so for you. Ahead the new season, we’ll compare three more names to have either joined or been linked with new clubs.

As we’ll already have been discussing goalkeepers, we’ll also have five stat-based quiz questions on the good and the gloved as we get back to our regularly scheduled Stat, Viz, Quiz.

If you haven’t done so already, you can subscribe below and receive SVQ every week.

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STAT – Changing the Game

Goalkeeping has evolved so much in the last decade.

In the 2013-14 Premier League season, only four goalkeepers who played at least 10 games had a pass completion of over 60%.

In the 2023-24 Premier League season, six goalkeepers who played at least 10 games had a pass completion of over 80%, with two more not far behind on over 79%.

The general increase in teams passing out from the back and therefore requiring goalkeepers to be better and more involved with their feet has unquestionably been a factor, and we have seen certain shot stoppers really thrive in this brave new world.

Brazil internationals Ederson and Alisson are justifiably seen as the two goalkeepers who came to the Premier League and raised the bar. They continue to do so after seven and six years in England respectively, but according to reports, the former could be on his way out.

Some in the media are suggesting Ederson is of interest to the Saudi Pro League and could make a move this summer, which would see Manchester City lose arguably the best goalkeeper in their history.

When Pep Guardiola arrived in 2016, he quickly moved Joe Hart on and went with Claudio Bravo and Willy Caballero as his two goalkeeper options. However, after a third-place finish in 2016-17, Guardiola knew something wasn’t quite right.

Ederson arrived from Benfica and became his first-choice goalkeeper immediately, with City going on to win the Premier League with 100 points in 2017-18. There were obviously other factors, but arguably none as great as the impact the Brazilian made to City’s structure on and off the ball.

In the league in 2016-17, Bravo had averaged 30.6 passes per game with 72.6% accuracy, while Caballero averaged 24.3 passes per game with 76.5% accuracy. The following season, Ederson averaged 26.1 passes per game with 85.3% accuracy.

His influence has only grown as the game has evolved further over recent years to include the goalkeeper even more. Ederson averaged 35.4 passes per game with 85.9% accuracy last season, the highest accuracy of any Premier League goalkeeper.

For comparison, City’s second-choice goalkeeper Stefan Ortega averaged 34.5 passes per game with 78.1% accuracy, and it will be interesting to see if the club promotes him should Ederson leave or if they will head back into the transfer market.

Four goalkeepers in Europe’s top five leagues had a better passing accuracy than Ederson last season; Marc-André ter Stegen, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Yann Sommer and Janis Blaswich (minimum five games).

Could any of them replace Ederson, or will he even need replacing? Man City have managed selling players in the past, but it would feel like an almighty job if they need to replace the big Brazilian.

VIZ – Players on Our Radar

Who doesn’t love to compare players?

With Opta Player Radars, you can. To be precise, you can compare players from across the top five European leagues.

It’s an interesting and fun way to get a better idea of a player you’re perhaps unfamiliar with, particularly as we can use their data output to find players with similar playing profiles.

We’ll use this summer’s biggest move as an example. Kylian Mbappé is now finally a Real Madrid player, and looking at who he compares to really is quite interesting.

As you can see from the radar at the top, when comparing to players from the last 10 seasons and based on his numbers in Ligue 1 in the 2023-24 season, Mbappé profiled most closely to two rather impressive individuals: Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.

That certainly bodes well for the newest Galactico, even if his Euro 2024 campaign was somewhat underwhelming. He’ll get to line up alongside Vinícius Júnior and Rodrygo at the Santiago Bernabeu, and funnily enough, if you go and look at the Opta Player Radars yourself, you’ll see that when you compare Mbappé’s numbers specifically to players from last season, his new attacking teammates were the two players who compared most closely to him.

Victor Osimhen has been a name on the lips of many in the last two seasons. The Napoli striker has been mooted as a potential replacement for Mbappé at PSG, while links to the Premier League have never gone away.

He suffered with injuries last season, but when you see who he compared to the previous year – Harry Kane and two iterations of Robert Lewandowski – it’s not hard to see why Osimhen has been so sought after.

What about Manchester United’s new centre-back Leny Yoro? His numbers were impressive enough for the Premier League giants to make a big move him, but who did he compare to last season?

According to our radars, Yoro was closest to Roma’s Diego Llorente (72.1%), Fulham’s Tim Ream (72.1%) and Fiorentina’s Luca Ranieri (71.6%). That might not seem like the most star-studded list, but bear in mind he is only 18 years old.

Do you have someone you’d like to compare? Get over to the Opta Analyst website and get involved.

QUIZ – Goalkeeper Guesses

As we’ve been discussing one of the best goalkeepers in Europe, we decided to theme this week’s quiz around those gloved individuals who are willing to stand between the sticks and have footballs fired at them. Answers at the bottom of the page.

1. Which goalkeeper kept the most clean sheets in the Premier League last season?

2. Which goalkeeper is second only to Cristiano Ronaldo for most appearances in total in the UEFA Champions League?

3. Which La Liga goalkeeper kept a remarkable 26 clean sheets in the 2022-23 season?

4. Which goalkeeper conceded just 13 goals in 35 games in the Premier League in 2004-05?

5. Of those who played at least 11 times, which goalkeeper boasted the highest save percentage in the Premier League last season?

Ask Opta

Your favourite segment, and ours, is back.

We’re once again giving you the chance to Ask Opta any stat-based questions you might have on your mind. If you have a question for us to get stuck into, send it to editors@theanalyst.com and we’ll do our best to provide you with the answers.

This week’s query comes from Gary from Stockport, who asks: “I saw Kevin De Bruyne’s assist numbers for last season in your Nico Williams article. If he’d have played a whole season without injury, how many assists do you think he’d have ended up with?”

Answer:

Now, obviously this is all speculative. Without access to a parallel universe where De Bruyne doesn’t sustain a hamstring issue in Man City’s opening game of last season at Burnley, we can’t be sure what he could have achieved.

What we do know is that he returned in January and recorded 10 assists in 18 Premier League appearances, meaning he finished joint-third for assists in England’s top flight despite playing at least 10 games fewer than anyone else who reached double figures.

If you look at all competitions, though, De Bruyne’s output was even more impressive.

In just 26 games, the Belgian managed a whopping 17 assists, with only Bayer Leverkusen’s Florian Wirtz (19) managing more of players in Europe’s top five leagues in 2023-24, though the German did so in 49 games.

Looking at good old-fashioned extrapolation, we could simply double his numbers. De Bruyne played 1,749 minutes last season, almost exactly half those of Julián Álvarez (3,478 mins), who made the most appearances for City (54 – albeit only 39 starts). That would of course suggest De Bruyne would have reached 34 assists in all competitions, but that’s a little too basic.

While his second half to the campaign was incredibly productive, you could argue his freshness at a time when others already had half a season in their legs played a part, while five of his 17 assists came in the FA Cup – which you clearly can’t extrapolate as Premier League teams don’t join that competition until January. Perhaps you could argue he could have just done the same in the EFL Cup, but they were knocked out in the third round of that competition by Newcastle United, albeit in De Bruyne’s absence.

Just one of his assists came in the Champions League, though that was in the knockout stage. Could he have filled his boots in group games against RB Leipzig, Young Boys and Red Star Belgrade? Quite possibly.

Even in a parallel universes, we try to deal in actual data rather than ‘possibles’, so let’s look at De Bruyne’s expected assists (xA).

Despite recording 17 assists, De Bruyne only amassed 9.3 xA. It’s perfectly understandable to think he could have overachieved on that throughout a whole season given the quality of his teammates’ finishing and the fact, y’know, he’s Kevin De Bruyne.

It would seem unsustainable to outperform it to the extent he did for a whole campaign, though, so let’s double his xA, and assume he merely met it in the first half of the campaign before exploding as he did in the second.

That would mean he’d have ended with around 26 or 27 assists in all competitions. In the last 20 years the most assists recorded in a single season in all competitions by someone playing in one of Europe’s top five leagues is the 29 from Lionel Messi in 2011-12 and from Juan Mata in 2012-13, while De Bruyne managed 28 in 2022-23 and 27 in 2014-15.

Could he have bettered those totals? We’ll never know, but City fans will just be hoping they get to see plenty more of him next season.