Data driven player of the month: Erling Haaland's art is not just scoring goals
In terms of quality and the number of scoring opportunities allowed, Leipzig have the best defensive performance of the current Bundesliga season. On average, they allow their opponents 0.87 expected goals per game and even only 0.70 since the competition restarted in January. From open play, the team has conceded only six goals during the last 10 matches. Still, Haaland needed seven shots and 57 minutes of play to score five goals against them...
In his six starts so far this Champions League season, he has fired 23 shots on the opposition's goal, resulting in 10 accurate shots. That means he has converted 43% of his attempts, an unprecedented figure. And it's not much different for his entire career in this elite competition.
The Norwegian phenom has played 25 games and approximately 2,000 minutes so far, scoring 33 of his 82 shots. And that's still exactly a 40% success rate. Even the best number nines in the world convert only about one in five shots over the course of a season (or a similar sample of minutes). A fourth at best, but those are usually the best career results.
Finishing is a secondary skill for a forward. More important is whether he can predict how the game will develop and where the ball will go, so that he can then use his movement to find and finish it. If he gets into dangerous positions often enough, the technique itself won't matter as much, as long as it's not really extremely bad.
However, Haaland has long excelled at both, and the match against Leipzig was the perfect demonstration of his skills. It wasn't the kind of exhibition shots that win TV polls. However, they were the result of a great reading of the game. This skill is further enhanced by the fact that he manages to move in central areas when he plays the ball, rarely across the width of the pitch, increasing the likelihood that he will be able to reach the right area in time.
On the pitch, he gives the impression of always being one step ahead of the defenders in his thinking. He can manipulate their positioning with his movement in the box, and it may not just be because of runs but also situations where he simply puts himself in the right place because he can guess that is where the ball will eventually drop. And once he gets to it, his great finishing technique comes into play.
The high percentage of chances converted is one of the phenomena that has accompanied his entire career. Whether it's the Champions League, the Austrian or German Bundesliga, national matches or right now the English Premier League.
No other player is in a better shooting position in the current season. According to mathematical models, Haaland has a 73% chance of scoring in every game (excluding penalties) and has scored as many as 28 times with a total of 22 expected goals.
Which isn't groundbreaking information, because as a great finisher he outperforms his xG regularly. In addition to the six goals above expectation in the Premier League, that's 16 in the Bundesliga, 10 in the Champions League and another six in the Austrian top flight. That already adds up to an objective sample of 11,000 minutes or 122 games.
In terms of average shots per game, only Fulham's Aleksandar Mitrovic and Liverpool's Darwin Nunez are ahead of Haaland in England. The Norwegian striker has racked up 3.5 attempts, while Núñez's standard is one more. In average number of touches with the ball inside the opposition's penalty area, the City forward is only fifth behind Arsenal's Gabriel Jesus and Eddie Nketiah, Newcastle's Aleksander Isak and the aforementioned Núñez.
So does this mean Haaland still has room for improvement? He would certainly say so himself. However, it can be well demonstrated in this case that one cannot draw quick conclusions from just some data metrics, but needs to go a little deeper.
Although Nunez and Mitrovic have higher shot counts, Haaland records the most attempts from the so-called danger zone. That is from the centre of the opposition's penalty area, where the chances of scoring are greatest. He sends an average of 2.5 shots on goal per game. He also has the most penetrations into this area per 100 passes and dribbles.
If we change the tracking of the frequency of action not per 90 minutes of play but per 100 touches of the ball, that provides a more objective view of how often Haaland is in the penalty area and what style of play he uses. Out of 100 touches, he meets the ball in the box on 26 occasions, the best record in the Premier League. In short, his first instinct is to get into a good shooting position as quickly as possible.
In the Premier League, Haaland only gets an average of 15 touches with the ball in the final third of the pitch per game. By comparison, Jesus gets an average of 32 touches of the ball, Nunez 25 and Harry Kane is on 18 touches. So the Sky Blues marksman doesn't have the ball on his boot very often, but when he does, he poses a huge threat to the opposition defence due to his movement. Moreover, once he is on the ball, it is very difficult to deprive him of it. In a metric that tracks the number of times a striker loses the ball after being challenged by an opposing player, Haaland is fourth best in the Premier League.
Not often enough is said about his very good final pass. According to the metric of expected assists, he has a 13% chance of assisting from open play in every game, which is third best among strikers in England. He moves at the level of Gabriel Jesus, who is considered by experts to be one of the most creative nines in contemporary football. During his time in the Bundesliga, Haaland was around 15% in the same model and is currently at 14% in the Champions League.
Simply put, he is exceptional in many ways, not just in scoring goals...