Playing with numbers in La Liga 2016

Last year I had a look at different stats from La Liga, in order to identify interesting players as per their numbers.

This year, after this Liga ended, I did the same exercise.
I went to whoscored.com and took the stats of all the players from "Primera División".
I passed all the numbers to "per 90 minutes" in order to have representative stats.
Then I filtered and took into account only players who played more than 1500 minutes.

Here are the results.

Goals and Assists

First the most obvious one: Goals and Assists.

Unsurprisingly the BBC and MSN are on top of it, although Neymar is a bit behind.
Messi is the best "assistant" and Luis Suárez the best striker.
James, Koke, Soldado from Villarreal and Susaeta from Athletic show interesting assists numbers.

I wanted to have a look at what in Spain we sometimes call "the other Liga", without Real madrid and Barcelona. I also took Atlético apart. This way it is easier to discover not-so-famous players.
New names appear.

Gameiro from Sevilla, Aduriz from Athletic, Borja Bastón from Eibar, Bakambu from Villarreal, El Arabi from Granada, Miku from Rayo Vallecano and Rubén Castro from Betis score more than one goal every two games.

I found it would be interesting to filter players that are 23 year-old and less.
They are the future of the Liga.
This is how it looks.

Alcácer from Valencia is alreay part of the national team.
Borja Bastón had a brilliant year at Eibar, on loan from Atlético.
Iñaki Williams from Athletic and Sanabria from Sporting have good scoring numbers too.
Asensio, on loan from Real Madrid to Espanyol and Luis Alberto, on loan from Liverpool to Deportivo La Coruña, reached really brilliant numbers on the "assists" side.

Shots and Key passes

But sometimes a goal is missed for only few centimeters.
Thereofore let's look at shots/90min and Keypasses/90min. Key passes are passes that led to a shot.
This way we can have an idea of the attacking impact of the players.

The red line is the tendency line.
MSN and BBC still on top. We can see that James gave a lot more key passes per 90 minutes that the others.
Sarabia from Getafe ranks very high as well. It shows that his teammates could not take advantage of his passes. Now that his team is going to Segunda, maybe a club from Primera will sign him ?
On the other part of the graph, we can see that CR7 shoots a lot !!

Pablo Sarabia

If we don't consider Real madrid, Barcelona and Atlético the resulting graph is the following:

In addition to the ones mentioned in the first section, the "old" Trashorras from Rayo and Joaquín from Betis are up there.
Banega from Valencia and Viera from Las Palmas have great Key passes numbers.
Nolito, Lucas Pérez and Luis Alberto, all from Celta, are clear attacking players.

If we repeat the exercise for players under 23 only, new names appear.

Rubén Pardo, from Real Sociedad, is on top of the chart and thus is the best key passer of the youngsters.
We already talked about Asensio. Denis Suárez from Villarreal is likely to come back to Barça next season.
On the right part of the chart, in addition to Luis Alberto and Borja Bastón, Ferreira Carrasco shows up from Atlético.

Shots and Goals

I wanted to know who needs less shots to score. This is the result:

Luis Suárez, Benzema and Bale are the most efficient goalsscorers.
Messi and Cristiano are the ones that shoot the most.

Let's remove Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atlético.

Gameiro, Aduriz, Borja Bastón, Bakambu and El Arabi are efficient strikers.
On the other side, Luis Alberto and especially Bebé, from Rayo Vallecano have more difficulties to score !

How does it look for players under 23 ?

Usual names, to which we can add Oyarzabal from Real Sociedad and Peñaranda from Granada.

Passes

It is often said that we like to take care of the ball in La Liga.
Let's see who gives more passes.

Unsurprisisingly, players from Barcelona and Real Madrid are on top.

But there you can see Tashorras, from Rayo Vallecano. He is the one leading the way his team play.

Goalkeepers are on the bottom left part of the graph, except Claudio Bravo, who has a much better pass sucess percentage.

Long balls

Long balls are defined by Whoscored.com as "an attempted/accurate pass of 25 yards (23 meters) or more".
Who plays most of them ?

On the left part we can see the goalkeepers - Bravo plays generally shorter passes than the others.

On the opposite part, Mascherano, Kroos and Trashorras give more long passes than the others.

Jordi Alba seems to give almost exclusively short passes !

Crosses

Who tends to send more crosses ?

According to this, Konoplyanka from Sevilla is a crossing machine.
Also Beñat, from Athletic, along with Sarabia, Rubén Pardo and James.

Through balls

I wanted to have a look at the "through balls", which I like a lot.
Whoscored.com define them as "an attempted/accurate pass between opposition players in their defensive line to find an onrushing teammate (running through on goal)"

Nolito, James and Iniesta are very good in this aspect.

But Messi is on a different level. His vision of the game is unrivalled.

Dribbles/Fouled

It is always interesting to see who are the best dribblers.

Also I wanted to know if it has a relation with the fouls received.

Neymar, Messi and Ferreira-Carrasco are the players whith most succesfull take-ons in La Liga.

Halilovic, on loan from Barça to Sporting, Konoplyanka and Isco are a step behind.

Regarding the fouls, Neymar is the most fouled player, followed by Pablo Hernández, the midfielder from Celta, Dani Ceballos from Betis and Success from Granada.

Conclusion

This is it, we played with numbers in La Liga 2016.

They are only numbers, and it would be risky to draw conclusions from them. But they are useful to notice names or trends and to start investigating further.

Have a look a the graphs, look for you favorite players, check if those stats reflect what you thought or if on the contrary they are surprising, and try to understand why.

Enjoy !

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Playing with numbers in La Liga