Below the Radar Analysis

Image: Wikimedia Commons By: Kees van Hemmen It’s pretty safe to say that Mason Greenwood has gotten off to a hot start with Manchester United. With 12 goals and 4 assists in just over 1600 competitive senior minutes, the 18 year old has drawn praise from far and wide for his maturity and goal scoring prowess. Man United legends like Gary Neville and Andy Cole have expressed how impressed they are with him, and recently departed striker Romelu Lukaku has tipped him as the most promising youngster with the club, saying, “Greenwood that boy coldddddd.” Marcus Rashford , too, has praised the young striker’s “frightening talent.” One particular skill that Greenwood has been tipped for is his immaculate finishing ability. This bears out in the numbers, too, as Greenwood has managed 10 goals from 4.5 NPxG across league and European competition. Man United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer , quite the accomplished finisher himself, has also appraised the 18 year old's finishing ski...

Image: Ailura By: Kees van Hemmen Data in football has a variety of limitations. We cannot capture everything that we want to, and even the things we do capture are incomplete or misleading. What this ultimately means is that, despite all the advances in our understanding of the game that data has provided, we are still clinically undervaluing some players. As a result, almost anyone working with football data will tell you no player or team can be properly understood without some form of video analysis. Context is everything. Unfortunately, a side effect of this is that any time a player looks underwhelming in the data, if their reputation is strong enough, someone will say, “Oh, but he contributes in this way, which is immeasurable and incredibly valuable.” It's a frustrating and often abused loophole in data driven argument, and perhaps no footballer benefits from this more than Liverpool midfielder Georginio Wijnaldum . Having begun ...