Finding The Best Finisher For The 2019-20 ISL Campaign

It is often assumed that the top goalscorer can be termed as the best striker or finisher in the division. However, being the highest goal scorer and the best finisher are two different things, in my opinion. Often players from top teams take away the honour of the golden boot. Of all the six Isl seasons, golden boot winner's respective teams have managed to get in the playoffs at least.

Players from top teams have an advantage that they play in a team which creates a lot of chances. Often lower end teams don't get that many chances, and as a result, their strikers struggle to score goals freely. Hence, that is why something like an xG has become a revelation in football in the last few years as it can judge a player based on chances they have got.

Nerijus Valskis of Chennai City FC won the golden boot in the 2019-20 campaign as he bagged 15 goals for the season. In fact, there was a three-way tie between Roy Krishna(ATK) and Bartholomew Ogbeche(KB) as all three had 15 goals for the season. But Valskis edged it as he had better assists and lesser minutes played than the other two.

Incidentally, Valskis also turned out to be the best in terms of overperforming his xG. The Lithuanian striker's xG for the season came out to be 9.18, which means given the quality of chances he got throughout the season, he should have grabbed around 9-10 goals. However, he overperformed his xG by 5.82 as he scored 15 goals for the season.

Here are the goals, xG and difference chart for players with six or more goals in 2019-20 season. The players have been arranged based on their xG difference.

Our top 3 xG overperformers are incidentally the players who finished in the same rank in the golden boot race. Lallianzuala Chhangte is the best Indian performer in our list with Sunil Chettri being just behind him. However, both of them have relatively weak xG overperformance when considered to other top players on the list.

One also needs to take into account the number of shots a player takes at goal to estimate how efficient he is. A player will have a higher xG if he keeps on taking numerous shots through the season. Hence, xG doesn't give us the efficiency of a striker on that front. A simple way to judge the effectiveness of a striker could be to see his goals/number of shots stat.

Another factor which can help a player's xG to rise is the number of penalties he has taken. It is generally believed that a penalty kick's xG in a regular game is said to range from around 0.75 to 0.80(varies from league to league). Hence, it means there is a 75% to 80% chance of scoring a penalty. To bring player's who don't take penalties on the level playing field with players who do, we would need to subtract the penalty goals and penalty xG.

Therefore to judge a players' finishing efficiency, we can come up with this formula.

Non-penalty goals - Non penalty xG/Shots

I believe that this would give a striker's efficiency, and one can get a number for his conversion rate. The result can be termed as finishing efficiency.

Next, I plotted the finishing efficiency and non-penalty goals/90 in a scatter chart.

Manuel Onwu of Bengaluru FC is almost an anomaly as he bagged seven goals in the season by registering just 14 shots. His finishing efficiency came out to be 0.29. I almost had to double, and even triple-check his numbers.

The Spanish forward spent the first half of the season with Bengaluru but was signed up on loan by Odisha FC in January. All of Onwu's goals for the season came in Odisha FC's colours. Onwu overperformed his xG by 4.1. But what makes him stand out in our graph is his efficiency as his every second shot in the season ended in the back of the net. One might have to carefully look at all his goals to find out the reason behind him standing out.

Coming to the normal, Lithuanian striker Nerijus Valskis, our golden boot winner does well in the graph. He has the best finishing rate among the mere mortals (0.13).

Hugo Boumous turned out to be the second-best(I'm not counting Onwu as first as his numbers are extraordinary) finisher even though he finished 5th in the golden boot race with 11 goals. Boumous' finishing efficiency was just behind Valskis at (0.12).

Chettri's finishing efficiency turned out to negligible as his xG overperformance was only 0.74. However, if one took out his three penalty goals, then his 'goals to xG difference' went into negative.

Conclusion-

One can safely say that Valskis' golden boot was well deserved as he had the biggest xG difference, and even in finishing efficiency, he turned out to be the best. However, Ogbeche and Roy Krishna who had the same number of goals as Valskis fell in terms of efficient finishing. It was Boumous of FC Goa who had the second-best finishing rate in my calculation.

The situation for Indian forwards doesn't look too rosy, and it wasn't a surprise when Igor Stimac raised a concern a few months ago about India's lack of strikers. Only two Indian players managed more than six goals in the season. However, Chhangte and Chettri's finishing wasn't on par with the best forwards in the league.

Data source: xG stats taken from Amrit's website greyareaanalytics. You can follow him on Twitter. Rest of the numbers taken from ISL's official website.