we will take a deep dive into the Premier Division performance data output from the players at Derry City this 2020 season.

In this article, we will take a deep dive into the Premier Division performance data output from the players at Derry City this 2020 season.

All stats highlighted are for players who played a min. of 270 league mins this season.

Goalkeeping

As mentioned in previous articles, our GK model is still under development. Peter Cherrie was solid across the season. 6 clean sheets from 18 games – with 18 goals conceded in the 12 games (1.5 goals per game, when conceding).

Defensive metrics

Def 1v1: Darren Cole led the rest of the squad when it came to defensive 1v1 situations/90 mins (definition in previous articles); with 5.51 successful def. 1v1 situations per 90 mins. Conor McCormack was the overall team leader in number of def. 1v1 encounters however with 119 encounters & the highest number of successful def 1v1 encounters (68). The player with the highest success rate (80.00%) – Ibrahim Meite.

Tackles: Conor Clifford stood out here, with the highest successful tackles/90 mins (1.29) over the season; a tackle being any sliding challenge made to dispossess an opponent. The player had the number of tackle attempts (22) & highest number of tackle successes (10). Three players led the way with 100% tackle successes: Eoin Toal, Danny Lupano and Darren Cole.

Def Aerial duels: One clear standout player in this metric – Eoin Toal. The player ended the season with the highest number of duels contested (115), the highest number of successful duels/90 mins (4.11) and the highest number of successful duels (74). Danny Lupano ended with the highest aerial success rate (77.78%).

Progressive Regains %: Our final metric for ranking the defensive side of the game is the progressive regain %. As mentioned in our previous article, it gives a greater sense of what a player does once possession is regained. Cameron McJannett led the way here with an 87.34% progressive regain rate from 79 regain attempts.

Attacking Metrics

Goal Scoring: Derry City scored 18 goals this season from just 181 efforts on goal. Based on shot location only, their total season xG was 23.87 goals – underperforming in front of goal by 5.87 goals. Walter Figueira and James Akintunde were joint top scorers with 4 goals – Figueira underperforming his xG rate by 0.45 goals & Akintunde overperforming by 1.47 goals. The most efficient in front of goal (i.e., the player with the highest efforts on target ratio) was also Ibrahim Meite with a 71.43% efficiency % from 7 efforts on goal.

Chances Created: The ‘chance creator’ is powerless as to whether it is an assist or not (down to his teammates’ ability to finish), but using chances created as a metric, this gives a clear indication of who the creative influences in the side are. Adam Hammill was the most creative player this season with 2.89 chances created/90 mins, from the highest number of chances created also – 22.

Attacking Aerial Duels & Hold Up: Tim Nilsen had the successful attacking aerial duels/90 min rate of 2.37, James Akintunde had the highest number of duels (44). The same player was the squad leader for the number of successful hold-ups/90 mins (1.09).

Attacking 1v1 & dribbles: Walter Figueira stood out from the rest in both metrics – the player ended with the most dribble attempts (27), joint-highest number of take-on attempts (92) in the squad (efforts to beat the opposition defender). Stephen Mallon ended the season with the most successful att. 1v1v attempts/90 (2.3).

Possession Metrics

5957 passing attempts were tagged for Derry City this season (both successful and unsuccessful). With regards to pass direction:

Who stood out, possession-wise? As mentioned in our last article, pass completion doesn’t always give the clearest indication of passing value, due to lack of directional data. Ally Gilchrist ended with the highest pass completion rate (88.11%) from 143 pass attempts. Cameron McJannett was 2nd with 86.25% completion from 451 passes. The same player had the highest number of successful passes/90 mins (43.22), and Conor McCormack who had the most successful passes (593) & the highest number of pass attempts overall (693).

In previous articles, we mentioned that progressive passes are a far more insightful possession metric; passes towards the opposition goal. Ally Gilchrist again leads this metric with 67.83% of his passes made towards the opponent’s goal, McJannett in 2nd place again with 67.63%. The same duo lead the way in highest progressive pass accuracy – Gilchrist with a progressive pass completion rate of 82.47%, ahead of second-placed McJannett with 80.00%.