I decided to put this article together after discussing the merits of shooting from range. While we all agree that a curling, dipping effort is more likely to get goal of the season than a scuffed shot in the box, is there any Fantasy Football merit in opting for long-range shooters over foxes in the box? Here I delve into Fantasy Football Scout’s members area statistics to find the answer.
Fox in the box statistics
Here is a link to a stat table I created a while back that depicts which forwards are having the most shots from inside the area. When sorting this table by all goal attempts, both inside and outside the box, the top performers are Sergio Aguero (25), Graziano Pelle & Mario Balotelli (23), Diego Costa (22), Romelu Lukaku & Edin Dzeko (21).
But sorting by shots inside the box it begins to tell a separate story. While Aguero, Pelle and Costa sit at the top with 20 apiece and Dzeko close behind (17), Lukaku falls away slightly (13) and Balotelli drops like a stone – only nine of his 23 attempts have come from inside the box.
Sorting by goals (and goals inside the box) next, we again see the table taking better shape with Costa miles ahead of everybody else – nine goals out of nine inside the area.
Next up are West Brom’s Berahino and Leicester’s Leonardo Ulloa. Both of these players have registered five goals, all from within the penalty area. Compare this with Balotelli – could his terrible points return thus far be correlated to his shots being from long range? That certainly looks the case.
Lastly I noticed Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney and Sunderland’s Connor Wickham’s stats. Both have registered 19 attempts, eight of which were inside the box, and all of their goals have come from within the box. Looking at the last column I noticed that Rooney’s accuracy is at 31.6% with Wickham’s down at 15.8%, and at the top, Costa once again on 72.7%, miles ahead of everybody.
Long Rangers statistics
According to this table, if sorted by the goals from outside the box, you can see these are rare things indeed.
So far 23 goals have been scored from outside the area this season, all by different players (and only four of these were free kicks), whereas Costa, Ulloa, Berahino and Aguero alone have scored 23 goals from inside the box so far this year.
Let’s find the worst culprits for shooting from anywhere. As shown above, nobody beats Balotelli in this with 14 attempts from range (tied with Craig Gardner). Next come Yaya Toure and Tom Huddlestone, both with 12. There are several on 11: Rooney, Christian Eriksen, Aaron Ramsey & Niko Kranjcar, with several more chasing these, most notably: Kevin Mirallas & Stewart Downing (10), Andre Schurrle & Angel Di Maria (nine) and Cesc Fabregas & JonJo Shelvey (eight).
Whilst I’m not saying these players should necessarily be avoided, it is clear that shots in the box are far more likely to lead to a goal.
Best defences for Foxes and Long Rangers
My final table is laid out to show which teams concede the most chances both inside and outside the box, hopefully to give you a bit of insight into the defensive nature of the teams. Here are the best and worst for each
Worst In the Box:
- Leicester and Hull – 69
- QPR – 62
- Swansea and Villa – 60
- Palace – 56
- Burnley – 54
Worst Outside the box:
- Leicester – 64
- Hull and Sunderland – 54
- Swansea – 48
- Chelsea – 46
- Stoke and Everton – 45
Best In the Box
- Southampton – 29
- Chelsea – 31
- Sunderland – 35
- West Ham, Liverpool and Arsenal – 36
- Man City – 38
Best Outside the Box
- Arsenal – 18
- Man Utd – 26
- Southampton – 28
- Man City – 29
- Liverpool and Newcastle – 30
Using the above information I have a better idea of which players might perform better against certain teams. For example, when Chelsea play Leicester, Hull and QPR I will most certainly be captaining Costa but when he’s up against Southampton it’ll be a whole different story.
