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FootballCritic's Paul Macdonald on Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and the Premier League's most important strikers
How much difference has your team’s forward and the goals he scores really made to their league position? In other words, how decisive have they been?
Well, what does Decisive mean? FootballCritic (FC) defines ‘decisive’ as a goal that changed the match state into the state in which it ended.
Bear with us.
Think of an equaliser - if the match ends after the equaliser, then it will have been decisive in deciding the outcome. Or what about the goal that puts a team ahead. If Arsenal are drawing and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang scores to make it 2-1, even if the game finishes 5-1, his goal is deemed decisive as it changed the match state.
We can accumulate these goals for forwards across a season and it is a useful statistic because, to use an Americanised term, we can identify ‘clutch’ forwards who score in moments where his team really needs him. It allows us to also avoid ‘goal-padders’, forwards whose goals arrive in the 85th minute of a 5-0 win when the game is already won. Put simply, the decisive statistic digs out the forwards doing the heavy lifting for their teams in terms of points gained.
And there’s a reason why we reference Aubameyang in the example above; in the Premier League in 2019/20, nine of his 17 (53%) goals have been decisive, more than any other player.
From the opening day of the season, when Auba’s goal clinched the points in a 1-0 win at Newcastle, he has been bailing an average Arsenal team out on a regular basis. In his next outing against Burnley he struck the winner again, in a 2-1 triumph, then in the derby with Tottenham his equaliser earned his team a point from 2-0 down. That’s in effect a five-point swing in the first month of the season.
Indeed, Aubamayang’s stats in general are pretty spectacular across most elements of his forward play; removing penalty goals from the equation, his shot-to-goals conversion rate is 25.4%, second only to Jamie Vardy, while in terms of Non-Penalty Goals P90 his score of 0.62 is fourth in the league, behind Sergio Aguero, Gabriel Jesus and Danny Ings.
Why do we hate penalties so much that we want to remove them from the stats? Well, not every forward gets the chance to take them, leading to unfair comparisons, and the free hit at goal offered by a penalty offers us nothing in terms of analysing a forward’s overall strike play. And in these metrics Auba excels in a team which absolutely hasn’t. Arsenal’s reliance on him is further emphasised by the fact that he has contributed 42% of his team’s non-penalty goals in the league - only Ings (44%) has a higher rate.
Most Decisive (#) (Min 1,000 mins, min five goals)
- 17 goals, 9 decisive
- 13 goals, 9 decisive
- 8 goals, 7 decisive
- 16 goals, 7 decisive
- 8 goals, 6 decisive
Most Decisive P90 (Min 1,000 mins, min five goals)
- 17 goals, 9 decisive (53%)
- 0.35 decisive per 90 minutes
- 10 goals, 5 decisive (50%)
- 0.34 decisive per 90 minutes
- 13 goals, 8 decisive (62%)
- 0.29 decisive per 90 minutes
- 16 goals, 7 decisive (44%)
- 0.28 decisive per 90 minutes
- 8 goals, 7 decisive (88%)
- 0.26 decisive per 90 minutes
But he isn’t the only ‘clutch’ forward in the top flight - step forward Raul Jimenez. Eight of the 13 (62%) goals he has scored in the Premier League have been decisive, though the Wolves man does lose a little bit of love because two of those eight were penalties. Even so, it’s quite something that your goals mean that much to your team.
Jimenez’s ratio would be the best in the league (for players who have scored a minimum of five goals) in most circumstances, but if there’s an unsung hero that can be identified, a forward whose goals have literally shaped the destiny of his club’s season, then we need to talk about Jordan Ayew.
Ayew has scored eight league goals for Crystal Palace in 2019/20, and seven of them (87.5%) were decisive. That is the highest percentage in any of Europe’s top five leagues.
Big-game Jordan‘s goals have directly contributed to Palace picking up 12 points:
- Winner v Aston Villa (+2)
- Winner v West Ham (+2)
- Equaliser v Arsenal (+1)
- Winner v West Ham (+2)
- Equaliser v Arsenal (+1)
- Winner v Brighton (+2)
- Winner v Watford (+2)
Most Decisive (%) (Min 1,000 mins, minimum five goals)
- 7 of 8 (0.88)
- 6 of 8 (0.75)
- 8 of 13 (0.62)
- 4 of 7 (0.57)
- 9 of 17 (0.53)
His only non-decisive league goal came at Old Trafford, where he opened the scoring, Patrick Van Aanholt’s winner being the decisive strike in that match. If we take away Ayew’s goals altogether, Palace are suddenly level with Bournemouth, West Ham and Watford in the relegation positions.
Ayew cost just £2.5m but his goals are probably worth £100m to the team finances, keeping them well clear of relegation for another year, no matter what happens with the COVID-19 crisis.
We should also reassess Roberto Firmino’s efforts. His lack of goals have meant he has been overshadowed by Mo Salah and Sadio Mane, but of the eight Premier League goals he has scored, six have been decisive, including two crucial winners away to Wolves and Tottenham in January. And even the much-maligned Sebastian Haller’s modest total of seven goals includes four decisive efforts.
But what about at the other end of the scale; which players are scoring goals which don’t amount to much of anything? Well, of Bernardo Silva’s five goals this season, none have been decisive, while attacking midfielders Todd Cantwell and James Maddison have just one of their six goals being decisive, respectively.
And Ings’ goals may be heralded as turning Southampton’s season around, but just three of his 15 (20%) have been decisive; in fact Ings is the king of the consolation goal. His strikes v Liverpool (L 2-1), Tottenham (L 2-1), Chelsea (L 4-1), Everton (L 2-1), Newcastle (L 2-1), Tottenham (L 3-2) and Burnley (L 2-1) all counted for nothing in those fixtures, and while it’s not Ing’s fault that his team-mates can’t ensure his efforts are worthwhile, it’s misleading to suggest that their upturn in fortunes is down to his goals.
Least Decisive (%) (Min 1,000 mins, minimum five goals)
B. Silva
- 0 of 5 (0.00)
- 2 of 19 (0.11)
- 2 of 16 (0.13)
- 1 of 6 (0.17)
- 1 of 6 (0.17)
Troy Deeney
- 1 of 6 (0.17)
- 2 of 11 (0.18)
- 3 of 15 (0.20)
And it’s very interesting to see two of the leading names. Jamie Vardy is, no doubt, an integral part of how Leicester play but just two of his Premier League-leading 19 strikes have been decisive, and there’s a whole lot of goal padding going on in batterings of Newcastle, Southampton, and Aston Villa (twice).
Plus the difference between Sergio Aguero and Gabriel Jesus is stark; the two have largely shared the striking position at City but five of Jesus’ 10 league goals are decisive, while just two of Aguero’s have.
Does Pep Guardiola think of such things? Who knows. But all goals aren’t made equal, and some statistics show it better than others.
- Read more from FootballCritic on these pages over the coming weeks, and at footballcritic.com