Which Midfielder Makes Way For Baines?

It’s a dilemma facing many of us who have stacked ourselves up with a template front seven and now sit with no extra funds and lots of increased value in players that we don’t want to waste. What follows is an attempt to point you in the most obvious direction, statistically speaking – from someone looking to generate money from midfield – to draft in Leighton Baines, who has the form and fixtures to prosper over the next two months.

The template midfield clearly comprises  the quartet of Raheem Sterling, Cesc Fabregas, Angel Di Maria, Gylfi Sigurdsson plus bench fodder. Between them they have seen price increases of 2.4 and are currently all in the top five highest scoring midfielders. Sigurdsson is not really a ditching candidate, however, since that wouldn’t really free up enough funds, so of the other three, which to ditch?

I’m going to concentrate on regression. Which of these players is currently performing abnormally high and is, in all likelihood, going to face a slow down in returns? I’m going to mainly focus on assists, which is typically the bread and butter of our midfielders.

Historic Conversion Rates

                        Team Conversion rates (% of team shots resulting in goals)

                        Min     Max     Ave

2011/12           7          13.8     9.7

2012/13           6          15.3     10.0

2013/14           6          15.5     10.0

2014/15           3.9       19.4     11.3

                        MID assist rates* (% of chances created by individual midfielders resulting in goals)

                        Min    Max    Ave

2011/12           0         24.4   9.9

2012/13           0         16.9   8.4

2013/14           2.3      19.4   8.7

2014/15           0         33.3   13.1

* For players with >40 chances created (except for 2014/15 where I’ve used >10)

You can see that the numbers for the previous seasons are fairly consistent, particularly in the team conversion rates. In the current season, however, there are big outliers in both sections (shown in bold above) and they are both associated to the same man:

2014/15’s Template Midfielders

                   Team conversion         Individual assist rate

Fabregas          19.4                             33.33

Di Maria           14.8                             18.75

Sterling              8.9                               11.11

From looking at the above it seems clear to me that Fabregas is doing considerably better than we’d expect him to based on the historic rates we’ve seen in the league. Of course it’s possible that he creates chances so good that they are more easy to convert than everyone else’s, but I feel confident in saying that it’s nowhere near to the extent the numbers are showing and by season’s close the goal conversion rates of Chelsea, and Fabregas’ own assist rate, will be much closer to the long-term averages than they currently are.

I also looked at their individual shot conversion rates. Sterling and Di Maria are currently above average on 15 and 21 respectively whereas Fabregas is sitting on zero. However, Fabregas has only taken nine shots so is only one goal behind expectations based on past data, whereas he’s four or five assists ahead. Sterling is roughly on a par with what you’d expect of an elite goal-scoring midfielder (and actually his conversion rate this year is worse than his own last year) and Di Maria is about a goal ahead of where you’d expect him to be.

All of this points me to the fact that my fellow Fabregas owners and I have been very lucky to garner our seven assists so far (two or three would be expected based on previous seasons) and he is perhaps the man we should look to quit on while we are ahead, in order to get our funds for Baines. It’s also a happy coincidence that Chelsea’s fixtures take a slight turn for the worse, with both Man United and Liverpool away in the next four (where we can probably expect some trademark bus parking). Add in the fact that most of us have Diego Costa as well, meaning we’d still retain Chelsea coverage, whereas ditching one of the other two probably means losing attacking coverage in their respective teams.

My mind is made up, if – and it’s still a big if – I decide to get in Baines, then Cesc is the man to go for me.