The holiday season often means gifts, and we’ll use the time to reward 20 players for their valuable contributions to their Premier League sides’ seasons — regardless of whether the table has been naughty or nice to them.
This Monday morning exercise comes before Fulham meets Nottingham Forest, but has seen every team play 17 games, close to half of a season, and picks — hopefully not cherry-picks — five metrics we believe can help us determine a team’s Most Valuable Asset.
MORE — How to fix Arsenal’s attack? | What’s ailing Spurs?
That’s not value in terms of transfer value, but value to the team’s season. The metric we like the most of the five is “plus/minus net xG per 90 minutes,” which measures the net expected goals per 90 minutes of a team with a specific player on the pitch minus the net expected goals per 90 minutes when the player is not out there.
In other words, we know who’s on the roster. Who has been out there during the team’s best moments of the season more often? We used a benchmark of 400 minutes for this metric, figuring that nearly 4.5 matches of field time is a fair cut-off.
So, who are the 20 players who tip our statistical scales?
(Stats from FBref.com and Fotmob.com)
Arsenal
Leading scorer: Viktor Gyokeres (5)
Leading assists: Declan Rice, Leandro Trossard, Mikel Merino (3)
Leading non penalty xG+xA/90 minutes: Bukayo Saka, 0.54
Shot-creating actions/90 minutes: Martin Odegaard, 5.52
Plus/minus net xG per/90 minutes: Riccardo Calafiori, +0.95
Winner: Riccardo Calafiori is a game-changer, and +0.95 is an exceptional figure given that’s nearly a full goal per 90 minutes on a team that wins most games. Saka would be a close runner-up.
Aston Villa
Leading scorer: Morgan Rogers (7)
Leading assists: Rogers, Boubacar Kamara, Lucas Digne (3)
Leading non penalty xG+xA/90 minutes: Donyell Malen, 0.60
Shot-creating actions/90 minutes: Emiliano Buendia, 3.88
Plus/minus net xG per/90 minutes: Emi Martinez (+0.53), Malen (+0.50)
A funny side note: Jadon Sancho has produced an outlandish 8.18 shot-creating actions per 90, but at 133 total minutes doesn’t make our cut for minimum time on the pitch. There’s still something there!
Winner: It’s Donyell Malen, perhaps because it most surprised us given the praise given to Rogers, Kamara, and Ezri Konsa.
Bournemouth
Leading scorer: Antoine Semenyo (8)
Leading assists: Semenyo, Marcos Senesi (3)
Leading non penalty xG+xA/90 minutes: Eli Junior Kroupi, +0.64
Shot-creating actions/90 minutes: Marcus Tavernier, 3.64
Plus/minus net xG per/90 minutes: Evanilson, +1.60
Winner: Semenyo wins so many prizes but it’s worth looking beyond him especially as “Semenyo release clause” may be the most Googled item in the soccerverse this month. Marcus Tavernier is one of the most under-appreciated players in the league, and his plus/minus was just behind Evanilson.
Brentford
Leading scorer: Igor Thiago (11)
Leading assists: Jordan Henderson (3)
Leading non penalty xG+xA/90 minutes: Dango Ouattara, +0.39
Shot-creating actions/90 minutes: Mikkel Damsgaard, 3.32
Plus/minus net xG per/90 minutes: Kevin Schade, +1.62
Winner: Another tricky one, because the Bees have used several different playmakers to cue up Igor Thiago and they’ve also been pretty good at drawing penalties. Ouattara and Damsgaard lead the team in goal-creating actions this year —another good metric — and we’ll further slim it down by using Mikkel Damsgaard‘s 18 key passes which are 11 more than Ouattara. Schade is right below both in terms of top work and value, while Michael Kayode has to be mentioned as the big throws are powering his figures.
Brighton & Hove Albion
Leading scorer: Danny Welbeck (7)
Leading assists: Yankuba Minteh (4)
Leading non penalty xG+xA per/90 minutes: Danny Welbeck and Diego Gomez, +0.47
Shot-creating actions/90 minutes: Brajan Gruda, 4.74
Plus/minus net xG per/90 minutes: Georginio Rutter, +0.83
Winner: The stats make this look like a Rutter vs Minteh operation but we’re going to bypass the selected stat leaders to post someone high on most of these lists who is getting punished for playing almost all minutes. Center back Jan Paul van Hecke has been wonderful this season and is perhaps the integral piece of this team especially as Carlos Baleba has slipped a bit this season. Van Hecke’s 128 passes into the final third are partly a function of his position, but they more than double Lewis Dunk’s second-best total on the team and just 14 behind Premier League leader Virgil van Dijk in about a full 90 minutes less time on the field.
Burnley
Leading scorer: Zian Flemming, 5
Leading assists: Quillindschy Hartman, 4
Leading non penalty xG+xA per/90 minutes: Hannibal Mejbri, 0.30
Shot-creating actions/90 minutes: Mejbri, 3.13
Plus/minus net xG per/90 minutes: Hjalmar Ekdal, +0.99
Winner: This is another area where we’ll choose a player who is high up in these stats without topping a single category. Besides goalkeeper Martin Dubravka, Josh Cullen feels like the player most responsible for Burnley remaining in the race for safety. This could change as Zian Flemming continues to get more and more minutes or if Quillindschy Hartman becomes even more solid in his own end, but for now we choose Cullen.
Chelsea
Leading scorer: Joao Pedro and Pedro Neto, 5
Leading assists: Joao Pedro and Pedro Neto, 3
Leading non penalty xG+xA per/90 minutes: Estevao Willian, 0.77
Shot-creating actions/90 minutes: Estevao Willian, 4.92
Plus/minus net xG per/90 minutes: Trevoh Chalobah, +2.20
Winner: The sample size will hold us back from crowning a teenager, but Estevao Willian’s metrics are insane for an 18-year-old. It feels like a Bukayo Saka situation where we’re waiting a proper amount of time to let our mouths acknowledge what our eyes are seeing — this kid is up there with almost any young talent we’ve seen in the last decade in terms of potential and early output. But we’re going with Pedro Neto with this nugget as a huge reason why: Neto’s been rotated out of Chelsea’s Starting XI twice this season: a 2-1 loss to Man United in which he played just nine minutes and a 3-1 loss at Leeds that saw him sub into the game at halftime and produce their lone goal.
Crystal Palace
Leading scorer: Jean-Philippe Mateta, 7
Leading assists: Four players tied with two
Leading non penalty xG+xA per/90 minutes: Mateta, 0.55
Shot-creating actions/90 minutes: Yeremi Pino, 4.26
Plus/minus net xG per/90 minutes:
A note: Eddie Nketiah has 0.66 non-penalty xG+xA per 90 minutes, but fell nine minutes shy of our minimum threshold.
A funnier note: 16-year-old Joel Drakes-Thomas made his Palace debut on Saturday in the 86th minute versus Leeds. Palace promptly won a penalty )and would later concede via a free kick goal to Anton Stach). Given the high xG of penalties, the low xG of free kick goals, and the five minutes he spent on the pitch, Drakes-Thomas’ net on/off plus/minus per 90 minutes is a hilarious +19.14/90 minutes.
Winner: Anyway, we’re going with Daniel Munoz. His traditional and more underlying statistics are both very good, and Palace is 1W-2L since he hurt his knee. One of those was a decisive loss to Leeds which stands as their season’s greatest outlier.
Everton
Leading scorer: Iliman Ndiaye and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, 4
Leading assists: Jack Grealish, 4
Leading non penalty xG+xA per/90 minutes: Beto, 0.59
Shot-creating actions/90 minutes: Grealish, 4.03
Plus/minus net xG per/90 minutes: Ndiaye, +2.21
Winner: It’s Ndiaye or Grealish, and we have to make sure we’re careful to avoid the positives we feel from seeing the latter thriving after an on-off last season at City. Iliman Ndiaye is a freak, and it’s easy to see why Sheffield United splashed so much cash on him before an ill-fated relegation season. He’s a few years older in a much better team, and it looks that way.
Fulham
Leading scorer: Harry Wilson, 5
Leading assists: Samuel Chukwueze, 4
Leading non penalty xG+xA per/90 minutes: Emile Smith Rowe, 0.46
Shot-creating actions/90 minutes: Kevin, 3.40
Plus/minus net xG per/90 minutes: Joachim Andersen, +1.05
A note: Samu Chukwueze has 0.61 non-penalty xG+xA per 90 minutes, but fell two minutes shy of our minimum threshold. He’d also lead the team in shot-creating actions due to the same logic.
Winner: With apologies to Marco Silva, who gets more right than he gets wrong, he did his best attacking players dirty in the early parts of the season. You can’t play defensive substandards like Emile Smith Rowe, Kevin, and Samu Chukwueze all of the time, but any game that starts without two of them feels like malpractice.
Leeds United
Leading scorer: Dominic Calvert-Lewin, 7
Leading assists: Three tied with two
Leading non penalty xG+xA per/90 minutes: Calvert-Lewin, 0.59
Shot-creating actions/90 minutes: Anton Stach, 4.19
Plus/minus net xG per/90 minutes: Jayden Bogle, +3.45
Winner: Where would Leeds’ season be without the addition of Anton Stach? His move feels similar to Brighton’s move for Pascal Gross earlier this decade — one of the best non-massive transfers from the Bundesliga to the Premier League.
Liverpool
Leading scorer: Hugo Ekitike, 8
Leading assists: Cody Gakpo and Mohamed Salah, 3
Leading non penalty xG+xA per/90 minutes: Gakpo, 0.62
Shot-creating actions/90 minutes: Dominik Szoboszlai, 4.38
Plus/minus net xG per/90 minutes: Gakpo, +1.12
Winner: All of the underlying stats dare you to choose someone other than Cody Gakpo or Dominik Szoboszlai, and we’re choosing the latter due to his stunning turn as a right back earlier this season. Surely Liverpool will upgrade at right back in January but the fact that they weren’t sunk early in the season upon realizing that Conor Bradley and Jeremie Frimpong were struggling for consistency for the level is a pretty feather in the Hungarian’s cap.
Manchester City
Leading scorer: Erling Haaland, 19
Leading assists: Rayan Cherki, 6
Leading non penalty xG+xA per/90 minutes: Haaland, 1.06
Shot-creating actions/90 minutes: Jeremy Doku, 7.29
Plus/minus net xG per/90 minutes: Doku, +0.84
Winner: Rayan Cherki’s 6.50 shot-creating actions would be leading the Premier League this season in a world without Jeremy Doku, and Phil Foden has also been electric, but Man City — especially a Man City without a healthy Rodri — have reached a point like Barcelona in 2008-09 where any answer but one is trying too hard. It’s Erling Haaland, who doesn’t just score and soak up space and attention — he’s been more active in his own third than ever before, primarily defending set pieces. Absolute unit.
Manchester United
Leading scorer: Bryan Mbeumo, 6
Leading assists: Bruno Fernandes, 7
Leading non penalty xG+xA per/90 minutes: Mbeumo, 0.56
Shot-creating actions/90 minutes: Fernandes, 6.41
Plus/minus net xG per/90 minutes: Amad Diallo, +1.24
Winner: Amad Diallo has been very good and Matthijs De Ligt’s recent absence has shone a hugh spotlight on his value, but like Man City and Haaland the answer here remains the magnificent and now injured Bruno Fernandes. A possible silver lining for United while Fernandes recovers from injury is that Lisandro Martinez and Kobbie Mainoo have posted solid numbers in limited usage this season. Martinez, for sure, is about to rack up more minutes.
Newcastle United
Leading scorer: Nick Woltemade, 7
Leading assists: Three tied with two
Leading non penalty xG+xA per/90 minutes: Jacob Murphy, 0.64
Shot-creating actions/90 minutes: Murphy, 3.92
Plus/minus net xG per/90 minutes: Dan Burn and Harvey Barnes, +0.84
Winner: At some point, we all need to acknowledge that Eddie Howe’s development of Jacob Murphy is not some sort of short-term cool story. Murphy’s tantalizing Championship and League One production drew Newcastle to his services, but Howe’s unlocked him. On a team with massive wing depth, it still feels funny when Murphy’s name has kept Harvey Barnes, Anthony Gordon, or Anthony Elanga on the bench but shouldn’t, should it? At 30, this run may not last much longer and he may be slid to right back with Tino Livramento and Kieran Trippier out, but Murphy is a baller.
Nottingham Forest
Leading scorer: Morgan Gibbs-White and Callum Hudson-Odoi, 3
Leading assists: Two players with two
Leading non penalty xG+xA per/90 minutes: Omari Hutchinson, 0.57
Shot-creating actions/90 minutes: Hutchinson, 4.71
Plus/minus net xG per/90 minutes: Murillo, +0.96
Winner: Another name not atop the statistical categories above but irreplaceable for Forest continues to make Newcastle supporters green with envy as the club only sold him due to PSR and have gone on to watch him become a reported nine-figure transfer mill target. Elliot Anderson. Only Virgil van Dijk, Lewis Dunk, and Jan Paul van Hecke have more touches this Premier League season. The difference? Forest is 12th in average possession while Liverpool is first (61.9%) and Brighton ninth (51.9%). No outright midfielder has any many carries as Anderson, who is driving play more often than Ryan Gravenberch, Declan Rice, and Martin Zubimendi.
Sunderland
Leading scorer: Wilson Isidor, 4
Leading assists: Granit Xhaka, 4
Leading non penalty xG+xA per/90 minutes: Wilson Isidor, +0.32
Shot-creating actions/90 minutes: Xhaka and Enzo Le Fee, 2.74
Plus/minus net xG per/90 minutes: Xhaka, +2.10
Winner: This one’s short and sweet. Granit Xhaka might’ve not known much about Sunderland before moving Wearside, but he may pound-for-pound be the most important player in the Premier League. His stability, fire, and confidence are not measurable but the good news is that all of the measurables basically extend a straight, flexed arm with a rigidly-pointed finger at Xhaka. Nordi Makuele is second and closer than we’d like to admit given those strong words above, but the only figure more important to Sunderland’s success is Xhaka’s boss, Regis Le Bris, and we imagine the manager would admit that his ability to try different and even risky tactics is supported by Xhaka’s know-how.
Tottenham Hotspur
Leading scorer: Richarlison, 7
Leading assists: Mohammed Kudus, 5
Leading non penalty xG+xA per/90 minutes: Richarlison, 0.45
Shot-creating actions/90 minutes: Wilson Odobert, 3.12
Plus/minus net xG per/90 minutes: Pedro Porro, +1.21
Winner: Not Tottenham Hotspur, that’s for sure. The lack of a true standout player whose underlying numbers join the eye test in impressing this season is wild. Pape Matar Sarr was going to be our choice given the eye test but Spurs are almost a half-goal worse per 90 minutes with him on the field than when he’s off it. Mohammed Kudus has some decent advanced numbers but they also seem to indicate a player who is being given freedom to “just get open in attacking areas and make sure you get stuck into enough tackles to justify otherwise being a non-component.” We liked Djed Spence’s numbers enough to get him into consideration and worry that Richarlison is losing out to familiarity bias, but Joao Palhinha‘s the guy here. That Spurs are 1W-1D-2L since he left the Starting XI stands out at the moment, too.
West Ham United
Leading scorer: Jarrod Bowen, 5
Leading assists: El Hadji Malick Diouf, 3
Leading non penalty xG+xA per/90 minutes: Callum Wilson, 0.46
Shot-creating actions/90 minutes: Jarod Bowen, 3.00*
Plus/minus net xG per/90 minutes: Lucas Paqueta, +1.49
*James Ward-Prowse (4.14) makes our minimum qualifying standard for playing time but he hasn’t been in an 18 since September 20, so we’ll use Bowen’s number because this is an attempt to identify the team’s best contributor now and hopefully forward.
Winner: Wild outbursts aside, it’s easy to imagine Lucas Paqueta absolutely shining on a better team than West Ham. The Brazilian leads the team in accurate passes per 90, created chances, big created chances, and expected assists. Where might he be if the Irons front men were finishing in a better manner.... or a much better manner.
Wolverhampton Wanderers
Leading scorer: Eight players tied with one goal
Leading assists: Three players tied with two assists
Leading non penalty xG+xA per/90 minutes: Jhon Arias, 0.35
Shot-creating actions/90 minutes: Hugo Bueno, 2.82
Plus/minus net xG per/90 minutes: Arias, +0.66
Winner: Pick a Bueno, any Bueno. While Jhon Arias’ numbers do promise bigger things in the future, we’re looking at the unrelated Buenos: Hugo and Santiago. And how’s this for a fun fact: Hugo Bueno has an identical twin brother who is a footballer so Wolves really could do something spectacular in January. But the most spectacular thing they could do now, relatively-speaking, is a win a game. Santiago Bueno might well be their best defender but Hugo Bueno is the player most likely to generate a goal and Wolves have been just about the worst at that. We’re rooting for Rob Edwards to turn around his own club but these numbers were a dismal read.
