Aleksandar Mitrovic: Fulham striker named Infogol's Sky Bet Championship xG Player of the Month
Sporting Life have poured through Infogol's Expected Goals (xG) data and picked out Aleksandar Mitrovic as the Sky Bet Championship's xG player of the month for October, with the Serbian winning the award for the second successive month.
The xG player of the month is selected via Infogol's rating system, with Fulham striker Mitrovic's 8.8 across October, seeing off competition from Bournemouth’s Dominic Solanke (8.74) and QPR’s Lyndon Dykes (8.19).
Mitrovic scored eight goals in five games in October, from an xG of 5.27, but theories that the Serbian striker will regress towards the mean may be misguided.
Mitrovic has consistently outperformed his xG this season and has done in each of his last three seasons playing in the Sky Bet Championship. He is ruthless at this level.
The centre-forward has scored 47% of Fulham’s goals throughout the month of October, which is some going considering Marco Silva’s side netted 17 times, leaving them by far the highest scorers in the division.
It has not just been against the league’s also-rans that Mitrovic has been racking up the goals either, as he proved against fellow title-contenders West Brom in the final game of the month, scoring a hat-trick from an xG of 1.8.
Against Coventry at the beginning of the month is another perfect example of exactly the level of finishing that Mitrovic has been displaying this season.
His Fulham side beaten 4-1 by the Sky Blues, but the striker netting a consolation goal for his side from his sole shot in the match, and from a chance that he has just a 7% chance of scoring according to Infogol’s xG model.
Mitro's Premier League woes
Mitrovic’s numbers are even more incredible when you compare his stats to the torrid time he had in the Premier League last season.
The forward managed just three goals from a total xG of 7.35 in 2020/21. After scoring a brace in a 4-3 loss to Leeds in September, he wouldn’t score his third and final goal until April, going 21 league games without finding the net.
Under Scott Parker he started just 13 times, with Fulham often opting for a false nine. But this term new manager Marco Silva has made Mitrovic his man and the Cottagers number nine hasn’t looked back.
Record-breaker in the making
In fact, Mitrovic is on course to break the record for most goals scored in a Championship season, and quite comfortably if he continues at his current rate.
The striker’s goal in Fulham’s 1-0 victory over Peterborough in their last game before the international break puts him on an astonishing 20 league goals for the season.
The current record for most goals scored in a Championship season is 31, set by Brentford’s Ivan Toney in 2020/21, and Mitrovic is on course to surpass that by early 2022, demonstrating just how impressive he really has been for Fulham this term.
His exploits have not gone unrewarded either, with the Serbian signing a new five-year deal with Fulham that will reportedly earn him £100,000-per-week if he meets all of the club’s performance targets, making him the highest-paid player in Championship history, though the rate he is performing at, it is difficult to argue that he is not worth it.