Aleksandar Mitrovic: How many goals will Fulham striker score this season?
Aleksandar Mitrovic is having himself a season for the ages.
- Article published before Fulham's 1-0 win over Hull
The Serbia striker has scored 30 Championship goals already. It's only February.
Mitrovic's tally has come from just 27 league appearances for Fulham, with his goals per 95 minutes rate a staggering 1.15.
Why do Sporting Life Infogol use per 95 minutes rather than per 90?
- Based on studies and calculations, the actual average length of a football match, including any added time, is 95 minutes. By using per 95 rather than per 90, we get a truer reflection of what we can expect from a player in a match.
- A recent example; Donny van de Beek came on for Manchester United v Crystal Palace in the 86th minute - many sites have him down as playing five minutes, not taking into account the five minutes of added time he was on the field for too. In total he was on the pitch for 10 minutes. Per 90 doesn't take into account the extra minutes played and can skew data accordingly.
In terms of expected goals (xG), Mitrovic is overperforming somewhat, with his 30 goals so far coming from chances equating to 22.2 xG - the Serb averaging a league high 0.85 xG/95.
The striker needs just one more goal to break the single-season scoring record in a regular Championship campaign, currently jointly held by Ivan Toney (Brentford, 2020/21) and Glenn Murray (Crystal Palace, 2012/13).
He has a whopping 17 games to do so, meaning it is incredibly likely he will be the new record holder, but how much higher can Mitrovic set the bar for future years to come?
Just how many goals will Mitrovic end up with in the Championship this season?
I've done some calculations to find out exactly that.
How do we calculate how many goals a player can be EXPECTED to score?
Without a crystal ball, it is impossible to accurately predict how many goals Mitrovic will score from now until the end of the season.
However, with a few calculations, we can make a solid estimation.
First of all, we need to work out how many goals Fulham are expected to score in their final 17 games of the season.
Infogol has team ratings for each club in all of the competitions it covers, and with those team ratings we can calculate a probability of each team winning each future game, as well as how many goals a team is likely to score and concede in each of those matches.
Using this method, we calculate that across their remaining 17 Championship games, Fulham are expected to score 32.3 goals.
Next, we need to look at what percentage share of those future goals will likely be scored by Mitrovic.
To do this, we will use Fulham's xGF per game total from their first 29 games and Mitrovic's xG/95 tally to get a percentage share.
Fulham have racked up a whopping 2.24 xGF per game this term, with Mitro (0.85 xG/95) therefore getting on the end of roughly 38% of Fulham's xG on a game-by-game basis.
Now we have that percentage, we can calculate the most likely number of goals Mitrovic is expected to score for the remainder of the season, by taking the number of goals Fulham are expected to score (32.3) and multiplying it by our percentage in decimal form (0.38) to get 12.3.
How many goals will Mitrovic score?
So, the most likely number of goals Mitro will score in Fulham's final 17 games of the season is roughly 12.
However, as said before, we don't have mystical powers that allow us to look into the future, so we can't say "Mitrovic will score 12 goals in the final 17 games".
Instead, we need to look at the different number of goals he can possibly score, along with the percentage chance of him scoring each number of goals - this being done via a Poisson distribution.
What is a Poisson distribution?
- In statistics, a Poisson distribution is a probability metric that is used to show how many times an event is likely to occur over a specified period.
By doing this, we see that Mitrovic can statistically score anywhere between one and 27 goals from now until the end of the season.
According to the metric, the most likely number of goals he scores in the remaining 17 games is 12, with an 11.4% chance of him bagging a dozen.
That would leave Mitrovic with 42 goals in a full Championship season, which is an insane return.
By using the Poisson distribution we can see that he has a 1.2% chance of scoring 20 in the remainder of the season and thus finishing the campaign with a whopping 50 goals!
Sporting Life specials - Aleksandar Mitrovic goals scored - currently on 30 (via Sky Bet)
- Evs - Mitrovic to score 42+ goals
- 4/1 - Mitrovic to score 45+ goals
- 16/1 - Mitrovic to score 48+ goals
- 33/1 - Mitrovic to score 50+ goals
Visit the market here (Odds correct at 1100 - 11/02/22)
The highest number of goals the simulation has him down for in the remainder of the season is 27, with a 0.01% chance he finishes the season with 57 goals!
While that would be an incredible thing to witness, the bracket we will most likely see from Mitro from now until the end of the season is between 10 and 14 goals, with a 52.7% chance he fires a goal return in that range.
That means he finishes the season with between 40 and 44 goals over 50% of the time.
To reach 30 is an incredible feat. To reach 40 would be astonishing, and would likely be a Championship record that stands until the end of time.