Interesting Passers From Bundesliga's First 5 Games (hint: Nordi Mukiele)
So this chart plots my passing model rating (location data, when in possession chain pass comes, speed of attack, and a few more variables) vs how easy of a pass a player attempts. The size of the dot is how often their team takes a shot within 15 seconds of the player attempting a pass (this seems to favor teams who play in a frenzy so I'm considering a new variable but for now it stays). Color of dot is distance from goal pass starts at.
Not really surprising in many ways here: Robben, Forsberg, Lewandowski leading the way in lots of areas. Kagawa making easy passes that don't generally lead to shots and Andre Hahn being generally awful at passing as he always is.
There might be something about being a right back that helps here: often times fullbacks have some of the largest outliers in a passing model. That said, this page already is a Nathan Redmond and James Maddison fanpage, Nordi Mukiele might need to be added. These are simply absurd numbers. Let's break it down a little further among players in this category (passers start 45-50 yards from goal on average, 32 total players)
Top Passer Rating (simply completion%/expected comp%)
Nordi Mukiele: 1.12
Kevin Kampl: 1.08
Kai Havertz: 1.06
Jean Zimmer: 1.04
Florian Neuhaus: 1.03
average: .95
Highest % of Passes That Lead To Shots Within 15 Seconds
Nordi Mukiele: 21.7%
Javairo Dilrosun: 17.8%
Steven Zuber: 17.3%
Josip Brekalo: 16.7%
Nils Petersen: 16.3%
average: 11.9%
He is the player who makes his passes when the team is moving forward the quickest, Zimmer is also near the top there and both make the toughest passes in this group. Mukiele's passes "should" be completed 64% of time but he's completing 72% of them.
