Below the Radar Analysis

Image: Wikimedia Commons By: Kees van Hemmen Many football fans become fearful when talk turns to their club buying players from the Dutch Eredivisie. In particular, there’s an immense stigma around purchasing forwards from the league famous for its beneficial goalscoring environment. The Eredivisie averaged 3.47 goals per game last season, a figure that paced Europe’s top flight competitions. In recent years, players like Justin Kluivert , Luuk de Jong (twice), and Vincent Janssen have failed to hit the heights many hoped the forwards would upon leaving the Eredivisie. Memphis Depay , too, struggled immediately after leaving his home country, only to become one of Ligue 1’s best forwards in Lyon. The list goes on, and as a result of these players' recent struggles, many fans, and perhaps decision makers at clubs as well, have started to view the league as an unreliable place to find talent. This is particularly interesting given the Eredivisie’s reputation of yesteryear as a bre...

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 ...

Image: Femke Kruize By: Kees van Hemmen A couple of months ago I wrote on Ajax’s Hakim Ziyech  and how he was well overdue for a big money transfer to one of Europe’s biggest clubs. At the end of the January window, he finally got his move. It was a long time coming, as Ziyech had long outgrown the Eredivisie. Now, at the risk of beating the Ajax talent treasure trove to death, I’d like to direct your attention towards the Dutch giant’s other under-appreciated superstar: Cameroonian goalkeeper Andre Onana. Onana, now 23, has been the first-choice keeper for Ajax since the 2016-17 club season, and for the length of that time he’s been a reliable presence between the sticks for the Eredivisie leaders. However, starting last season, Onana elevated his play to truly world class heights. Publicly available xG2 or post-shot xG data is essentially non-existent for the Dutch Eredivisie, unfortunately. However, what we can look at are Onana’s Champions League numbers. And boy a...