Player Reports: Sofiane Boufal
After the massive undertaking that was poring through the new treasure trove of StatsBomb supplied data at FB Ref, I wanted to hone in on a few players who caught my eye and try a few comparison tools out.
First off, here are the total team recaps I wrote
We come to Southampton and Sofiane Boufal.
Age: 26
TM Value: 8 million.
Position: AMC/LW/RW
Nation: Morocco 🇲🇦
Contract Until: 2021
Technical details are at the bottom.
Recap
Boufal has had an elite season as far progression volume and reception rate go. He's done this with an enormous target share on a team that generally has had below average progression and reception rate from their forwards.
This is now 3 straight seasons of elite reception rate for Boufal, his yards per minute number is exactly the same as last years number at Celta Vigo and just a 0.3 bump from the 2017-18 season at Southampton. Last year he made the leap forward towards the very top in Live Shots Created from and this years leap has come in that final category. After back to back years where "lacking end product" could describe him (.23 and .28 total xG + xA), he's jumped into the respectable yellow bit there, on the backs of his xA leaping from .13 to .31. Is this sustainable? You'd have to believe in his ability to suddenly create above average chances (.19 xA per key pass this year after .07 and .09 the previous two seasons). I think some of that is real, as he's slowly moved his game up the pitch over the past two seasons, but the leap to 0.19 is a bit much. The lacking end product criticism will likely follow him wherever he goes in the future, particularly since he doesn't produce goals or take set pieces. But with the improvement in quality of his key passes and overall game climb, Boufal can be a weapon at clubs much better than Southampton. He might have to be a bench joker type, like he has been for some of this season, but top-line talent like he has via progression, reception ability and shot creation is very valuable. Manchester United for instance, seems like a club with space for an attacking weapon like this.
Technical details
I wanted to see how he stacked up to fellow players at his part of the pitch so I made these graphics. This chart is this player compared to all other players that have similar field tilt, no differentiation is made between wide players and central players. Field tilt is calculated by weighting touches in all parts of the field: penalty box, attacking third, middle third and own third to get a rough gauge on where the player is showing up most often.
The black diamond is the players rank, the gray circle is his teammates who occupy a similar spot on the field's rank.
The first two columns are basically purely stylistic, what % of a players total touches are in the box and what % of a players progression comes via carries.
The next one is about how often a player's number is called: target share is how often passed are played to him, relative to an average player on his team.
Field Tilt is how far up the field a players average touch comes.
The next two are often tied together, but not always. Yards Per Min Progressed looks just at passes and carries yardage gained per minute to judge volume of progression, the next Yards Per Ball Loss looks at that with a denominator of ball losses to judge efficiency of progression.
Rec% shows how often a pass intended for a player is successful.
Live SCA/90 shows how many shots are created from a players actions per 90 minutes.
And of course, the most important metric on this chart is the final one: np xG + xA/90 which measures total goal production by a player stripping out penalties.