The Week in Stats: Aubameyang’s big misses

This week we look at big chances, which Premier League players are scoring exclusively from inside the box, and just how bad Fulham and Huddersfield are.

Big ideas

“Big chances” remain a divisive metric in the analytics community, mainly because they bring a clear element of subjectivity to what strives to be an objective field. Whether or not a scoring opportunity is deemed to be a “big chance” is down to the analyst who is watching the game live and then whoever reviews their work once the match is over.

As a result, concerns have been voiced that outcome bias comes into the picture. If an opening is converted, and especially if the player in question makes the act of scoring look easy, then the greater the likelihood of that opportunity being described as a big chance, or so the argument goes.

It remains popular, however, in no small part because it’s a statistic that pretty much everybody who knows the sport can relate to. Here are the figures for the current Premier League season:

We can see above that although Arsenal’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has enjoyed the most big chances – 25, three more than the player the second-highest total, Mo Salah – he hasn’t been putting those opportunities away very efficiently at all.

This won’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who watched Auba during his years at Dortmund. Even when he finished the season as the Bundesliga’s top scorer, few people would have ever described him as clinical.

If we break this down further by looking only at non-penalty big chances, while Aubameyang has still enjoyed the largest number (23), he’s only scored the equal eighth-highest total in the league.

The Arsenal forward is currently converting big chances at a very sub-par rate of 26.1 percent, against a season average in the Premier League of 38.6 percent.

Thinking inside the box

Javier Hernandez’s goal for West Ham on Friday has rightly been overshadowed by the fact that it should have been disallowed for handball. What became a little lost amid the post-match recriminations, however, was that the strike brought up a half-century of Premier League goals for the Mexican – and that every single one has come from inside the penalty area.

Hernandez’s finish against Fulham meant that he’s now scored five times this season, exclusively from inside the area, but that’s been outdone by 34 Premier League players. Three of them have scored 12 or more times – and two of those players are from Liverpool.

Moreover, Roberto Firmino on nine goals isn’t far behind Mo Salah and Sadio Mane. Liverpool have just four league goals from outside the box all season, with Daniel Sturridge, James Milner, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Xherdan Shaqiri all managing one apiece. That works out at an average of 0.15 per game. Only seven Premier League teams have scored fewer.

In contrast, Liverpool ended last season with nine, the fifth-highest total in the league and an average of 0.24 per game. Manchester City had the most with 13. That seems to identify another facet of the change in approach from Juergen Klopp.

Three Premier League players with more than one goal have scored all of them from inside the six-yard box: Ashley Westwood of Burnley (four goals), Brighton’s Mat Ryan (three) and Leo Bonatini of Wolves (two).

Low profiles

There’s no doubt that both Fulham and Huddersfield are having dreadful seasons. After 27 matches, since the Premier League began back in 1992, only two teams have had a lower points tally than Huddersfield’s 11 and just one – Barnsley in 1997-98 – had let in more goals than the 61 Fulham have conceded.

The big question here, especially in the case of Huddersfield, now seems to be whether this could turn out to be a historically bad campaign for the two clubs.

Huddersfield are currently averaging 0.407 points per game (PPG), and if Jan Siewert’s side manage to maintain that rate, then they’ll finish the season as the third-worst team in Premier League history, at least in terms of points.

Derby in 2007-08 and Sunderland in 2005-06 represent the very bottom of the barrel here. Only five sides have previously ended a campaign with an average of a half-a-point or less per game.

There are at least a couple of crumbs of comfort for Huddersfield, however: (i) they’ve already passed that Derby side’s record-low total of a solitary win in an entire league campaign; (ii) a single point from their remaining games will also see them surpass Derby’s all-time points low of 11.

Fulham, meanwhile, are conceding at an eye-watering rate of 2.259 goals per game. Seventeen teams have finished a Premier League campaign with an average of two or more goals against, per match. Fulham’s current rate would put them third in the all-time Premier League hall of shame, behind Swindon in 1993-94 and, yes, that 2007-08 Derby side.