PL 24/25 - Player Radars #2

Finishing edition.

I recommended clicking view in app/browser at the top to read the full post as some email providers will cut it short.

Housekeeping: I am doing more audio content via podcast this season! I will give more information later but it will stick to data-driven Premier League predictions and analytics. Here is your chance to tell me what specifically you want to hear:

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This is part 2 of the Radar post where I pick one player from each team and provide their stats radar and some comments. This now completes one player for all 20 teams, if you missed it you can read part one here. This specific post has a finishing skill theme, courtesy of the below chart from @Schadenfreudist:

This chart plots finishing skill against npxG per 90. The simplest way to interpret it is to look at where a player is in relation to the four corner labels.

Liverpool

Would it be a finishing skill discussion without Darwin Nunez? The stereotype is that Nunez is an awful finisher. Is that true? Not exactly. The data suggests that Nunez is indeed a below-average finisher - but nowhere near as bad as the discourse would have you believe.

Darwin is an elite chance-getter. The sheer volume of shots he takes mostly fuels this idea that he is a terrible finisher (if you take more shots than everyone else you will also miss more shots than everyone else).

If there is any issue, it might be his shot selection choice. He averaged 0.18 npxG per shot in Portugal and is now down at ~0.14 in the Premier League (which is still above average).

Man City

We are now getting multiple seasons of evidence that suggests Foden is an exceptional finisher. I don’t think we have ever really seen him have a below-average finishing season in the Premier League and of the ten players we are looking at in this post, his finishing-skill rating is second only to Son. I am hoping to see another season of big minutes for Foden.

Man Utd

@SnakeFpl on Twitter watched a lot of Zirkzee last year at Bologna and said that he is more of a creative type forward than a goalscoring forward, someone who likes to drop deep, and his quality of link-up play and creative intelligence should make everyone around him better.

I have two thoughts on this signing: (1) I don’t think Man United need another forward who doesn’t shoot much (it seems United are banking on Hojlund upping his shot numbers)… that seems to be the case:

Ten Hag: “Joshua Zirkzee has skills that we didn't have yet in this team. Such as his hold up play, creativity, dribbling. We didn't have this skillset yet in the striker position. Joshua Zirkzee & Rasmus Hojlund can play together. They compliment each other.”

A small counter-argument is that even though he does not shoot much, he does seem to be an above-average finisher (despite the small sample size because he doesn’t shoot much!).

(2) I agree that he will make those around him better, but conversely, he seems like the kind of player who is only worth it if he is already surrounded by a minimum-viable level of quality (which I am not sure he is at United).