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

In this article, we will take a deep dive into the Premier Division performance data output from the players at Finn Harps 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. Mark McGinley was one of the standout goalkeepers in the league this season; nominated by the SWAI for October’s Player of the Month and Player of the Season for the second straight season at the club. 5 clean sheets from 18 games – with 24 goals conceded in the 13 games (1.85 goals per game, when conceding).

Defensive metrics

Def 1v1: Ruari Harkin led the rest of the squad when it came to defensive 1v1 situations/90 mins (definition in previous articles); with a very impressive 9.09 successful def. 1v1 situations per 90 mins. Barry McNamee was the overall team leader in number of def. 1v1 encounters however with 122 encounters & the highest number of successful def 1v1 encounters (57). The player with the highest success rate (60.94%) – Leo Donnellan.

Tackles: Sadiki Kosovar stood out here, with the highest successful tackles/90 mins (0.95) over the season; a tackle being any sliding challenge made to dispossess an opponent. The player had the number of tackle attempts (21) & highest number of tackle successes (15). Sam Todd topped with the highest tackle success rate (85.71%).

Def Aerial duels: One clear standout player in this metric – Sadiki Kosovar again. The player ended the season with the highest number of duels contested (75), the highest number of successful duels/90 mins (3.37), the highest number of successful duels (53) AND the highest aerial success rate (70.67%).

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. Mark Russell led the way here with a 85.45% progressive regain rate from 110 regain attempts.

Attacking Metrics

Goal Scoring: Finn Harps scored 15 goals this season from just 151 efforts on goal. Based on shot location only, their total season xG was 23.57 goals – underperforming in front of goal by 8.57 goals. Mark Russell was the top scorer with 3 goals, outperforming his xG rate of 1.94 goals. The most efficient in front of goal (i.e., the player with the highest efforts on target ratio) was also Mark Russell with a 61.54% efficiency % from 13 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. Tony McNamee was the most creative player this season with 1.52 chances created/90 mins, from 9 chances created. Barry McNamee led the way for # of chances created, creating 15 chances in total.

Attacking Aerial Duels & Hold Up: Adam Foley led with the highest attacking aerial duels/90 min rate of 3.91, Alex Kogler had the highest number of duels (83). Kogler was also the squad leader for the number of successful hold-ups/90 mins (1.17), with Karl O’Sullivan the squad leader for total number of hold-up efforts (23).

Attacking 1v1 & dribbles: Mark Russell stood out from then rest in both metrics – the player ended with the most dribble attempts (47), joint-highest number of take-on attempts (46) in the squad (efforts to beat the opposition defender) AND successful att. 1v1v attempts/90 (2.31).

Possession Metrics

4205 passing attempts were tagged for Finn Harps 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. Gareth Harkin ended with the highest pass completion rate (83.63%) from 226 pass attempts. It was Ruairi Harkin who had the highest number of successful passes/90 mins (33.58), and Barry McNamee who had the most successful passes (313) & the highest number of pass attempts overall (394).

In previous articles, we mentioned that progressive passes are a far more insightful possession metric; passes towards the opposition goal. Stephen Folan leads this metric with 73.03% of his passes made towards the opponent’s goal. He didn’t have the highest progressive pass accuracy – this was Gareth Harkin with a progressive pass completion rate of 77.44%, ahead of second-placed Shane McEleney with 73.31%.