Top and bottom performers in various skills in the Premier League
We are returning for Year 2. Of what? Of recognizing the top — and bottom — players in the Premier League across a variety of general and specific skills.
Who is the quickest runner? Who is the fastest veteran? Who struggles the most with passing under pressure? Who excels in 50-50 duels? Can we reach a consensus on the best athlete? The least effective athlete? The most dependable goalkeeper? The most one-footed player? Which defender is error-free? Who is the least effective decision-maker in the final third?
With the distinctive, detailed dataset from Gradient Sports, we can address all these inquiries, and I will provide answers below — except for the last one. That one will be addressed here.
Which forward has taken the most shots, according to Gradient’s analysis, when a better passing option was available? That would be Liverpool’s Dominik Szoboszlai, with 26.
However, among players with at least 10 poor shooting decisions, who is utilizing the highest percentage of their attempts on shots when a teammate was open? That would be Manchester City’s Nico González: 83.3% of his shots were taken when a better passing option was available.
In comparison, his teammate, who he could potentially pass to, Erling Haaland, leads the league in shots with 91 — no other player has even reached 65 — yet only eight of those attempts were made when a teammate was in a more advantageous position.
Interested in more statistics like that? We have 25 additional specific (and somewhat arbitrary) superlatives for you, so let’s proceed.
– Ranked: The top 25 manager jobs in soccer, from best to worst
– Premier League’s 50 worst transfers of all time: Who is No. 1?
– Liverpool at a crossroads: Where has it gone wrong since title win?
Fastest player: Jackson Tchatchoua, Wolverhampton Wanderers
The team at the bottom of the league also features the fastest player in the league. Tchatchoua’s maximum speed, defined by Gradient as the average of each player’s five highest speeds sustained for a full second, is 35.78 kilometers per second.
This is nearly 0.4 km/s faster than Chelsea’s Pedro Neto, who ranks second. The difference between Tchatchoua and Neto is greater than the difference between Neto and sixth-placed Haaland.
Slowest player: Tom Cairney, Fulham
This should not be interpreted as a criticism of Cairney’s average speed — a mere 28.35 km/s. He is a possession midfielder who was never particularly fast and is now 35 years old.
Instead, this serves to highlight the resurgence of Casemiro, who was the slowest player in the league last season but has improved his pace to 29.85 km/s. Now Casemiro is merely one of the slower players in the league.
Fastest ‘old’ guy: Kyle Walker, Burnley
This season, 21 players have recorded a maximum speed of at least 34 km/s. Nineteen of them are 25 or younger, 20 are 28 or younger, and one is Walker, who is 35 years old and has a maximum speed that exceeds all but six other players in the league.
Slowest young guy: Myles Lewis-Skelly, Arsenal
It has been a disappointing season for Lewis-Skelly who, at this point last year, appeared to be on the fast track to starting for England at the World Cup. While he possesses technical brilliance, his lack of athleticism has limited his playing time this season, and this will be the biggest obstacle for him to overcome if he is to realize the potential he seemed to have a year ago.
The 19-year-old’s maximum speed of 28.65 km/s ranks as the third slowest in the league this season among outfield players, and the slowest among those under 28 years old.
Best passer: Bruno Fernandes, Manchester United
Gradient employs a team of analysts who evaluate various actions performed by every player in the Premier League each weekend. Every pass, shot, etc. is assigned a score between minus-2 and plus-2 (in increments of 0.5), and these scores are normalized across the league on a scale of 0 to 100.
Fernandes has emerged as the top passer in the league this season, with a score of 98.6, and he makes a strong case for being the best player in the league at present. Remember when there were questions about whether Manchester United should part ways with him last summer?
Worst passer: Dan Burn, Newcastle United
Burn has a fitting name, is an imposing figure, and has somehow transformed himself into a Champions League-caliber defender after turning 30.
While Burn possesses many positive attributes, “the ability to pass a soccer ball” is not among them. He has received a passing grade of 46.9 so far this season. He is completing approximately 77% of his passes this year — a figure one would expect from a forward, not a center back.
Best passer under pressure: Rayan Cherki, Manchester City
While Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola clearly still lacks trust in him — or rather, does not want to trust him — Cherki excels once the ball reaches his feet. He is one of five players with a passing grade of 90 or higher under pressure, alongside Moisés Caicedo, Adam Wharton, Jérémy Doku, and Leandro Trossard.
Worst passer under pressure: Dan Burn, Newcastle United
Apologies, Dan — I don’t set the grades! Although a few goalkeepers have received lower overall passing grades than Burn, he is the lowest-rated player at any position for passing under pressure.
Another potentially noteworthy detail from the poor under-pressure passers category is that Arsenal’s Gabriel Magalhães has a grade of 52.7, ranking third worst among 92 qualifying center backs. A potential vulnerability to exploit for any team facing the best team in the world in the coming months?
Best ball carrier: Ryan Gravenberch, Liverpool
It seemed that Gravenberch unlocked a new level of performance for Liverpool last year. Despite his team’s erratic consistency this season, the 23-year-old has maintained, if not improved, his performance in his second year as a full-time starter.
He is leading the league in ball-carrying grade for the second consecutive year: a score of 90.5, while no other player in the league exceeds 86. He has also received the ball while opening his body 213 times — tied for the most in the league.
Gravenberch’s ability to maneuver through pressure and carry the ball past defenders may be the only consistent and repeatable action we have observed from Liverpool this season.
Slowest ball carrier: Jérémy Doku, Manchester City
Doku earns this title for the second consecutive year, but he is actually moving a bit faster than he did last season: down to 2.68 seconds per ball possession, from just over 3.0 last year. This may seem minor, but I believe the slight increase in speed is part of his broader evolution from a player who accumulates impressive advanced statistics but does not contribute to his team’s victories, to someone who is a genuinely impactful player.
Best through ball passer: Jérémy Doku, Manchester City
We know Doku is one of the — if not the — most lethal dribblers in the world, and this season he has also been one of the most effective passers.
His through ball passing grade of 95.3 is by far the best in the league, surpassing Martin Ødegaard’s 88.8 mark in second place. Now if only he could find a way — or be permitted — to take more than 12 total shots through 25 matches …
Best set piece taker: Anton Stach, Leeds United
Yes, I understand, the name everyone anticipated. Stach has attempted four free kicks this season: Two were successful, one was saved, and the fourth was a disguised long-range fake-cross that he nearly managed to sneak past the goalkeeper from 40 yards out.
Clearly, four attempts are insufficient to confidently designate “best free kick taker,” but all of Stach’s shots have been of high quality.
Best shooter: Dominik Szoboszlai, Liverpool
The best free kicks, of course, belong to Szoboszlai. He is the only player with a 2.0-graded free kick. See below:
He is also the only player with two free kicks graded at 1.5 or higher:
His score isn’t as high as Stach’s because he missed a penalty against Burnley, and he has also blasted several balls into the stands or nearly out for throw-ins. However, when considering all of his shots, he actually ranks as the best shooter (90.7) in the league.
Worst shooter: Adam Wharton, Crystal Palace
Wharton excels in many areas, but shooting has not been one of them:
Among all players who have taken at least 10 shots this season, he has performed the worst: one with a neutral grade, five with a minus-0.5, five with a minus-1.0, and one with a minus-1.5 where he, well, yes, I have no idea what transpired here:
Of course, he also played the through ball that led to the even bigger miss right before his.
Most athletic: Daniel Muñoz, Crystal Palace
Gradient developed a comprehensive athleticism score that assesses various physical metrics — a combination of speed, endurance, and acceleration ability — for every player on a minute-by-minute basis. This score accounts for whether they were a starter or a substitute, their position, and their height.
Typically, I wouldn’t assert that whoever scores highest here is the best athlete in the league, but upon seeing that Muñoz has an athleticism score of 99.6 out of 100, I feel confident stating that he is the best athlete in the Premier League. Have you observed his play? He is everywhere, all the time, at top speed.
Least athletic: André, Wolverhampton Wanderers
Before his transfer from Brazil, André was linked with several top clubs in England. While the reasons behind any player’s choice to join Wolves remain unclear, it seems reasonable to conclude that André plays for Wolves rather than Liverpool due to his athleticism rating of 0.7 out of 100.
Most reliable goalkeeper: Gianluigi Donnarumma, Manchester City
Utilizing statistics to evaluate goalkeeper performance should be straightforward. Thanks to expected goals, one can simply examine the rate at which a shot is typically converted, invert the number, and determine which keepers are conceding fewer goals than expected from all the shots they face.
However, this approach does not translate seamlessly from season to season because these models are designed to predict how often a goal is scored, not how frequently a shot is saved, and because the profile of shots a specific goalkeeper faces changes significantly each year. Shot-stopping is such a reactive performance category that goalkeeper skill plays only a partial role.
In any case, a recent study by Gradient revealed that the percentage of times a keeper received a negative grade while facing a shot tends to be the most stable metric for forecasting goalkeeper performance. I believe this makes intuitive sense; while we remember the remarkable saves, the primary responsibility of a keeper is to avoid making mistakes — consistently.
This season, Donnarumma is the only starting goalkeeper who has not made an error while facing a shot.
Least reliable goalkeeper: Bernd Leno, Fulham
The 33-year-old German has committed seven errors while facing shots this season. This is both the highest total in the league overall and the highest percentage of errors relative to the shots he has faced: 6.5%.
Best ball winner: Virgil van Dijk, Liverpool
Gradient’s “challenge” grade evaluates any instance where a player attempts to win a ball in contested situations: a loose ball on the ground, a cross delivered into either box, a long ball played up the field.
Van Dijk is encountering more contested balls than ever before in his Liverpool career this season, leading to more mistakes than usual, but he has also been significantly more successful in these situations overall than anyone else. He tops the league with a 96.6 challenge grade and has the most positively graded challenges in the league.
