Why An Emphasis on the Assists Table Should Be A Thing of the Past
There’s a different, better way to measure the best creative players.
Harry Kane currently leads the Premier League in assists for the 2020/21 season. He’s set up 13 goals from the 28 games so far of Tottenham’s campaign. This even includes four from a single match, the 5-2 win over Southampton all the way back in September.
All four goals that Kane assisted in that game were scored by Son Heung-min.
The pair have combined for 14 goals in the Premier League in 20/21. The 14th came on March 7 in a 4-1 win against Crystal Palace. The fourth goal in that game saw Son assist Kane for a record breaking combination.
Unfortunately it was at home, otherwise the 1-4 scoreline would’ve been a rather appropriate way to mark the occasion.
They broke Alan Shearer and Chris Sutton’s record of 13 Premier League goal combinations from the league winning 1994/95 season for Blackburn Rovers.
The frequency with which Kane has assisted goals this season has seen a rise in praise for his creativity. His early season form especially drew plaudits from the media.
The Athletic pondered the question that, following that 5-2 win over the Saints, was Kane the Christian Eriksen replacement hiding in plain sight.
Sky Sports also drew the same conclusion later in the season. Kane’s early season creative hot streak saw pundits claim he’d added a new string to his game’s bow.
“The best demonstration of Kane’s creativity came during Tottenham’s visit to St Mary’s Stadium last month, when he provided four assists, all for Heung-Min Son, in the 5-2 win over Southampton,” wrote Nick Wright.
“Son rightly took the plaudits for his clinical finishing that day, but it was a masterclass in passing from Kane.”
The image from the tweet above shows that, actually, Son rightly earned the plaudits in that Southampton game.
Tottenham managed to create ‘only’ 2.2xG in a game where they scored five times, this is a sign of extremely good finishing to go with a decent level of chance creation.
Obviously, looking at the expected goals of one match is an insufficient form of analysis, but this particular example is a microcosm of the larger story.
That larger story is that Kane’s early season form was just that. It was a hot streak that largely came from the finishing of Son. Because, of course, the greatest problem with praising a player’s creativity through an increase in assists simply isn’t a reliable read of the game or the player.
For each of those 14 goals that the pair combined for, the passing player was relying on the receiver of the ball to finish the chance. A great illustration of the point is to look at the goal scored by Son in the North London derby back in December.
Kane receives the ball just inside his own half by the centre circle. The Englishman then shifts the ball out wide to Son, who then dribbles inside.
Son’s run found himself in space on the edge of the Arsenal box. He sent the Arsenal defender the wrong way, which allowed him the freedom to take an effort on goal that beat Bernd Leno at the top right of the goal.
It was a wonderful strike to give Spurs the lead of the match.
This was officially registered as an assist for Kane, even though Son did most of the work in setting up and finishing the goal.
While assists were a great introduction to the stats world to credit creative players who didn’t score as many, it has now gone well past its sell by date as the main metric we use to see who is creating the best chances for their teams.
It is time to look deeper into how teams create chances. We now have the tools to do this without going into complex systems or stats that put people off.
The Expected Goals metric has become widely adopted in mainstream football coverage, and Expected Assists should now be playing a similar role.
Looking at the xA for Premier League players in 20/21, so far, Kane currently ranks fifth for overall xA (6.3) and ranks eighth for xA per 90 (0.25). The fact that he has the same value in this metric as Pascal Groß also highlights the other issue with assists.
Kane’s strike partner has been on a scoring hot streak this season. Son has overperformed his xG (7.8), having scored 13 league goals.
Meanwhile, Groß has played for a team that has collectively underperformed their xG metrics. Thus Gros has not gotten nearly the same amount of credit. Brighton have scored 29 goals from an xG of 39.5.
The quality of strike partners has let down Groß, whereas Kane has been boosted by the good form of Son.
No other side has collectively underperformed their xG more than Brighton. On the flip side of this, Tottenham have overperformed their xG by 10 goals. Only Manchester United have performed more efficiently.
However, xG and xA still don’t tell the whole story.
Expected Assists still has its limitations and should never be used as the only way to judge a player’s creativity. It isn’t everything much the same way xG isn’t the only way to judge how good a forward is playing. They both must be used complementarily with other stats that help backup or prove a point.
This is where the stat Shot Creating Actions (SCA) comes into play.
“The two offensive actions directly leading to a shot, such as passes, dribbles and drawing fouls,” is how Statsbomb defines an SCA.
The leading few players for SCA and SCA per 90 will show no real surprises. Bruno Fernandes has created 138 shots this season, the most of anyone. Kevin De Bruyne has created 6.23 shooting actions per 90, topping that table.
Now this doesn’t give us that great an insight into the most creative players in the Premier League because it’s very obvious. If you watch the Premier League and haven’t figured out that Fernandes and De Bruyne create a lot of chances then maybe football analysis isn’t for you.
We can also point to the assists table for the season and see that those two are third and second, with 10 and 11, respectively. So assists aren’t totally useless, but it’s about filling in the entire picture.
Kane ranks 31st for SCA per 90, but is sixth for Goal Creating Actions (GCA) in the league. This, again, tells us that Kane is supplying efficient forwards with passes.
So with this we know that Kane is a good creative player, but perhaps not the best in the league — which, of course is fine and ‘good’ is more than enough for his role in this Spurs team.
But Kane is just one, albeit exceptional, player. If we look at the assists table, the top 10 currently reads: Kane (13); De Bruyne (11); Fernandes (10), Jack Grealish; Son (9); Aaron Cresswell (7), Marcus Rashford, Jamie Vardy; Lucas Digne (6); and a number of players with five.
Comparing these players to their SCA, the standout is, by far, Vardy. He ranks 111th in the league for SCA per 90 but ranks seventh for GCA per 90. Leicester City are yet another team that has collectively overperformed their xG for this season. They have scored 53 goals from 44.1xG.
So, while Vardy ranks high on the assists table, it is not right to say that he is one of the best creative players in the league.
Meanwhile, looking at the SCA per 90 table shows us that Mason Mount ranks fourth highest of any player in the division. Yet, the Chelsea midfielder only has three assists to his name from an xA of 5.5. He ranks 47th in GCA per 90, and his team has underperformed their xG (46.0), having scored 44 goals.
The SCA table also tells us how players are creating chances. Reader, you may be surprised to find Mount so high up on this table considering chance creation isn’t his main role in the Chelsea team.
But when it is broken down by the type of action that leads to shots, he leads the table on SCA by passing from a dead ball situation.
This is a level of accuracy and depth that merely looking at the assists table simply can’t match.
SCA, GCA (and their per 90 equivalents), xA and assists can all be used together to get a far more accurate read on the best creative players in the league than simply looking at the Assists Table on the Premier League’s website.
This needs to be the path that mainstream analysis goes down next in giving viewers a greater understanding of the best players in the league.
So, with that, I leave you with the greatest assist in football history, courtesy of Sergio Busquets.
Credit to stats from fbref, courtesy of Statsbomb, as well as transfermarkt.
