Here is the second of three posts looking into Yeovil Town’s central midfield and what the data tells us. You can read Part One here. As with part one, I have included Brett McGavin from Torquay as a reference point and Luke Russe from Bath City.
ATTACK
GOALS AND ASSISTS
| Name | Goals | Goals per 90 | xG | Assists | Assists per 90 | Expected Assists | Second Assists | Third Assists | Shots | Shots per 90 | xG Per Shot |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Worthington | 2 | 0.09 | 2.13 | 3 | 0.14 | 1.87 | 0 | 1 | 23 | 1.05 | 0.09 |
| Cooper | 0 | 0.00 | 0.79 | 2 | 0.16 | 1.13 | 0 | 0 | 11 | 0.89 | 0.07 |
| Lo-Everton | 1 | 0.09 | 0.29 | 3 | 0.27 | 2.32 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 0.72 | 0.04 |
| Owers | 1 | 0.14 | 0.18 | 0 | 0 | 0.34 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0.64 | 0.04 |
| McGavin | 6 | 0.39 | 0.91 | 0 | 0 | 0.33 | 1 | 0 | 17 | 1.1 | 0.05 |
| Russe | 0 | 0.00 | 0.41 | 0 | 0 | 0.74 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0.26 | 0.00 |
We can see Matt Worthington is leading the way with 2 goals from an xG of 2.13, with a goal every 10 games or so. Worthington is also our only midfielder to have equal or more than 1 shot per game on average.
Sonny Blu Lo-Everton as the same goals per 90 but has scored one goal and played less games. Lo-Everton only has an xG of 0.29 from 7 shots, thats less than 1 shot per game on average. Which I find quite surprising after the positioning analysis done in Part 1.
Charlie Cooper is yet to score, despite having 11 shots and 0.79 xG. Surely his first Yeovil goal is coming soon.
Josh Owers has a goal, a winner against this weekend’s opponents Eastbourne Borough. Of our 4 midfielders Owers has the least shots per game (0.64) and the lowest xG created 0.18.
McGavin has an impressive 6 goals from 0.91xG, tip for anyone playing Torquay watch the edge of your area with him about!
ASSISTS
King of the assists from midfield is Lo-Everton with 3, that’s an assist once every 4 games. His expected assists is slightly lower than his actual at 2.32. Part of that could be explained as he passed to Nouble as he chipped the Eastbourne keeper from miles out. His other two assists were both to Hyde and Young and were both passes. He also has one third assist to his name.
Next up is Worthington with 3 assists from an expected assists of 1.87, which shows he is getting more assists than you would expect. His assists include a cross to Wannell to win the game against the Truro, his other two are both passes to Jordan Young.
Charlie Cooper has 2 assists currently, one from a free kick against Bath. He was also the corner taker against Havant where we scored our first goal, which I don’t think is counted. His open play assist came against Truro with a pass to Olly Thomas. He has an expected assists of 1.13 and an assist every 0.16 games.
Josh Owers bottom again, no assists yet for him this season but he does have an expected assist of 0.34.
Interestingly from open play our central midfield have provided 3 assists in the opening 5 games and only 4 in the 16 since.
CROSSES, DRIBBLES AND FOULS
| Name | Crosses | Crosses per 90 | Dribbles | Dribbles per 90 | Touches in the Box | Touches in the Box per 90 | Fouled | Fouled per 90 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Worthington | 29 | 1.32 | 21 | 0.96 | 20 | 0.91 | 14 | 0.64 |
| Cooper | 9 | 0.73 | 16 | 1.29 | 5 | 0.4 | 29 | 2.34 |
| Lo-Everton | 8 | 0.73 | 20 | 1.82 | 9 | 0.82 | 4 | 0.36 |
| Owers | 5 | 0.72 | 5 | 0.72 | 2 | 0.29 | 7 | 1.00 |
| McGavin | 4 | 0.26 | 16 | 1.04 | 5 | 0.32 | 11 | 0.71 |
| Russe | 0 | 1.25 | 0.17 | 0.82 |
Worthington makes the most crosses by over 0.5 per 90 compared to other Yeovil midfielders. The other three all make just under 0.75 a game.
Picture courtesy of Mike Kunz.
Lo-Everton makes the most (1.82) dribbles per 90, next is cooper with 1.29 per 90, then Worthington with 0.96 and finally Owers with 0.72 per 90.
Worthington has the most touches in the box per 90 but it is still below 1 per game. Lo- Everton second, followed by Cooper and Owers.
Cooper is the 3rd most fouled player in the league winning 2.34 free kicks per 90. Owers is second most fouled Yeovil midfielder with 1 per 90, Worthington third with 0.64 and Lo-Everton last with 0.34 per 90.
DEFENCE
| Name | Duels per 90 | Duel Success | Interceptions per 90 | Aerial Duels per 90 | Aerial Duel Success | Shots Blocked per 90 | Progressive Passes Allowed per90 | Fouls per 90 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Worthington | 5.48 | 62.50% | 3.70 | 2.47 | 48.15% | 0.09 | 5.66 | 1.19 |
| Cooper | 7.83 | 69.07% | 3.96 | 1.78 | 0.40 | 5.33 | 0.97 | |
| Lo-Everton | 5.20 | 63.16% | 3.19 | 0.64 | 0.40 | 4.47 | 0.64 | |
| Owers | 9.32 | 60.00% | 3.73 | 3.15 | 0.14 | 6.45 | 2.01 | |
| McGavin | 8.22 | 62.99% | 5.83 | 3.37 | 61.57% | 0.39 | 3.56 | 1.10 |
| Russe | 6.43 | 65.77% | 5.87 | 3.28 | 0.30 | 5.31 | 0.56 |
Owers starts to show himself here, he makes the most duels however his success rate is below the others, The number of successful duels is still the highest at 5.6 per game, Cooper next best with 5.4 successful duels per game. Unsurprisingly Lo-Everton makes the least amount of duels.
Interceptions, if you look at Russe and McGavin both are around 2 more per 90 minutes than any of Yeovil’s midfielders. It may just be a style thing, Yeovil are ranked 39th out of the 48 teams for interceptions (808) and rank 7th for possession, 53.6% on average.
Aerial Duels is a metric that interests me as I often notice Yeovil either not competing for the ball or losing the second ball. Whilst there is no data on the second ball part. Aerial Duels suggest we don’t compete much for it when it is in the air middle of the pitch. Owers makes the most attempts with 3.15 per 90, then it is Worthington with 2.47, but he only wins 48% of them, that’s 1.2 aerial duels he wins a game. Cooper is third with 1.78 a game and Lo-Everton only has 0.64 aerial duels per game. This order pretty much matches their height order (Heights from Wyscout)
- Owers 6’1″
- Worthington 5’10”
- Cooper 5’9″
- Lo-Everton 5’7″
- McGavin 6’0″
- Russe 5’5″
McGavin has the most duels and wins the most out of the 6 players listed. However, Russe the shortest player competes for the second highest amount of aerial duels per 90. Does this mean its a tactic from Yeovil not to compete for them or they just don’t happen that often in Yeovil games?
Progressive passes allowed per 90, here the lower the number the better, Lo-Everton comes out on top for the Yeovil players, but is that because he plays further forward generally? Worthington and Cooper are about the same, but Owers lets 6.45 past him per 90, the highest amount on our list. McGavin once again topping this stat.
The last metric I’m looking at today is fouls per 90, Owers tops this one with just over 2 per 90, which is 0.22 duel per foul. Worthington also has a 0.22 duels per foul, whilst Cooper and Lo-Everton also have a similar duels per foul of 0.12. McGavin may give away 1.1 foul a game but his duels to fouls ratio is 0.13. For transparency, Russe duels to fouls is 0.09.
CONCLUSIONS
Before going this analysis I had some preconceptions, especially about Charlie Cooper and his defensive role. The number suggest he is better than I thought. However, when you compare all four of our midfielders’ defensive stats to Torquay’s McGavin, all come second best. If this was football manager, a tall Defensive Midfielder is a player I would be scouting for, if I couldn’t get McGavin.
Attack wise Lo-Everton’s stats come out on top. Because Yeovil do not have a singular DM I do wonder if this limits the attacking threat of the midfielders.
- Best attacking midfielder is Lo-Everton
- Best all round midfielder is Worthington
- Best defensive midfielder is McGavin (Cooper for Yeovil)
In the next and final piece on Yeovil central midfield I will look at the midfield combinations used so far this season by Mark Cooper, or is it Claudio Cooper?