Each day we pick out a player and cut through the noise to give analytical, objective insight. Thursday's focus is on striker Danny Ings.
- Age: 30
- Position: Striker
- Club: Aston Villa
- Country: England
For a man with 122 goals in 350 career games - a ratio better than a goal every three matches - Danny Ings' time at Villa Park has not quite gone how he might have liked but there have been signs this term he is returning to something near his best.
The common consensus would likely be that Ings has not set the world alight at Aston Villa - and that may be fair with a return of 14 goals from 52 matches - but was partly down to a difficult first season bedding in plus an early change of manager.
This term, he has already matched last season's tally of seven goals - including hitting six in 18 Premier League games, only eight of which have been starts, meaning his minutes this season have limited and could be why he is open to a move.
Indeed, if you measure a striker's productivity by goals per minute, then former Burnley, Liverpool and England man Ings is performing highly among the top 10 forwards in the division, as the graphic below illustrates.
And this is no one-off - Ings' output was similar during his two and a half seasons with the Saints in which his goals were one of the main reasons Southampton kept their heads above water and stayed in the Premier League.
Particularly impressive have been Ings' conversion rates over the past few years - during his two full campaigns at St Mary's, his rates of 23.7% in 2019-20 and 21.1% in 2020-21 ranked him in the top 10 most clinical finishers in both seasons.
He was outperforming the likes of Harry Kane, Sadio Mane and Sergio Aguero in percentage chance conversion - and bear in mind, crucially, he was doing so in a mid-table or struggling side. A scenario he will find himself in again if he joins West Ham.
Ings has the knack all good strikers have of being in the right place at the right time, as reflected by his continuingly impressive xG per 95 minutes figures - he ranks 13th in the top flight this season with 0.52 xG/95 despite Villa having a so-so campaign.
So, why do the Hammers need him? Well, the above graphic sums it up quite nicely. The Hammers are creating around the same number of chances this season as the likes of Manchester United and Liverpool - they just aren't taking them.
West Ham have scored just 15 goals from a whopping xG of 26.9 this season - leaving virtually 12 goals on the pitch which, the Infogol model suggests, is the difference between mid-table comfort and the relegation battle they find themselves in.
It is, as Alex Keble pointed out in last week's analysis of the Hammers' failings, the worst xGF under-performance in the top flight. So it's no surprise to see the Irons comfortably bottom of the Premier League's chance conversion rate too.
Simply, what West Ham need is somebody to put the ball in the back of the net and while a reported fee of £15m for a 30-year-old will raise eyebrows, Ings will be worth every penny if he can improve the Hammers' conversion rate by maintaining his own.
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