Player ball progression data for you to play with

and standouts who do it all...through a month

The king of soccer data on twitter is @markrstats, and he has this amazing, much more competent website full of great stats here. I thought I would follow him with a bit of my own here, a few extra things you can sort and filter by (TTS=time to shot or shot buildup contributions, position on pitch, receiving). So click through, ask questions and mess around with it to support your narratives and attack your opponents narratives.

Link for data

Link for data

A few things I found looking through for do-it-all players:

What I mean by do it all

-receiving

-progressing through pass or carry

-contributing to shot buildup

-being efficient with progression (yards gained per ball loss)

Is it necessarily desirable to do-it-all? Probably not, some teams don’t want their midfield to contribute directly to attacks or their wingers to be efficient for example, so not showing up on this list doesn’t mean

Central Defenders

Ko Itakura and Nico Elvedi (Gladbach)

Ruben Dias, Nathan Ake (Man City)

Dayot Upamecano and Lucas Hernandez (Bayern)…de Ligt’s progression numbers are preposterously far behind the other Bayern defenders but he’s played just one full game.

Virgil van Dijk (Liverpool)

Kalidou Koulibaly (Chelsea)

Willi Orban (RB Leipzig)

Gabriel (Arsenal)…Gabriel has received the ball quantitatively slightly more than Saliba, but it’s turned out to be nearly twice as many Fields Gained per 90 (1.6-.7) than Saliba. Not sure it actually means much as I assume most of these are under no pressure but Gabriel is playing a few yards in front of Saliba, receiving-wise.

Daniel Amartey (Leicester)…the way Leicester are setup lends itself to accumulation of passing yardage from the back to the midfield. Only Mainz has a higher % of their progression ending in the midfield, it signifies a team struggling to break into the opposition box. Leicester play incredibly conservatively, keeping the ball like Liverpool and City but without any of the end product. Amartey is 4th in the league in fields gained 10+ seconds into possession.

Wide Defenders

Alphonso Davies and Benjamin Pavard (Bayern)…only Cancelo has carried more yardage than Davies from this position, though my man Frimpong is just behind. Davies missed a game as well.

Joao Cancelo (Man City)

Trent Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool)…Robertson trails in a big way in terms of turning touches into shots and efficient progression.

Reece James (Chelsea)

Bote Baku (Wolfsburg)…interesting numbers.

Lucas Digne (Aston Villa)

Raphael Guerreiro (Dortmund)

just missed: Zinchenko…one of Arsenal’s problems could be their reserves out wide. Zinchenko is a ball progressing machine but Tierney and Tomiyasu look quite off the pace.

Benno Schmitz (Köln)

Attacking Wide Players

Harvey Elliott and Mohamed Salah (Liverpool)….Luis Diaz’s poor passing ability leads to his low efficiency number keeping him off this list.

Bukayo Saka (Arsenal)…Martinelli is just a bit behind in terms of progression and misses out.

Alessane Plea (Gladbach)

Dejan Kulusevski (Tottenham)

Allan Saint-Maximin (Newcastle)

Attacking Central Players

All City players (de Bruyne, B Silva, Foden, Gundogan)

Thomas Muller, Leroy Sane and Jamal Musiala (Bayern)…players like Mane and Haaland should really never show up in all-around metrics like this. If the player leading the line is incredibly efficient and driving a lot of progression through passing and carrying, they are not able to focus on getting on final balls and scoring. Both Mane and Haaland are receiving the ball at elite levels, contributing to shot buildup at incredible levels and Haaland is actually very efficient with the ball…they just don’t progress at great levels for good reasons.

James Maddison (Leicester)…preposterous how much of the work he has done for a toothless Leicester. Last week, without him, it changed a bit, but through 3 games Maddison looked like an elite attacker in the midst of a bunch of nothing.

Moussa Diaby (Leverkusen)….his link up with Frimpong has been an amazing bit in the midst of an ugly start for Leverkusen.

Sheraldo Becker (Union Berlin)…the counter-attacking side has risen to 2nd in the league through an amazing start from the 27 year old who plays for the Suriname national team. His partner Jordan (choose your last name but the US National team player) is the much more classic receiving and shot buildup contributor with minimal progression while Becker has been a great outlet on breaks: Bobby Reid from Fulham is the only player who has a higher share of their receiving coming early in possessions. Union sit back, win the ball, and look long for these two guys…Becker is great at then creating something else.

Harry Kane (Tottenham)

Players to worry about? Joe Aribo, Danny Ings, Timo Werner, Andres Pereira, Yoane Wissa

Midfielders

Youri Tielemans (Leicester)

Rodri (Man City)

Joshua Kimmich (Bayern)

Martin Odegaard (Arsenal)

Fabinho (Liverpool)

John McGinn (Aston Villa)

Kouadio Kone (Gladbach)

Ellyes Shkiri (Köln)

Jude Bellingham (Dortmund)

Exequiel Palacios (Leverkusen)

worries? Mattias Svanberg from Wolfsburg, Wilfred Ndidi, Jens Stage from Bremen, Harrison Reed from Fulham.

Try it out, click around and let me know if you find it interesting.