Finding the Next Move for Musa Barrow
Using stats to find a potential transfer destination for the Gambian starlet, who has shown world class potential in recent Serie A seasons.
If you’re unfamiliar with Barrow a quick visit to his FB Reference page and this comp of his goal involvements in 2019/20 are a good place to start. If you have a bit more time, I’d also highly suggest watching his performance in Bologna’s 3–2 win away at Roma this past February. That match, Barrow racked up 2 goals, 1 assist (0.6 xAssists), 5 shot-creating actions, 2 goal-creating actions, 3 successful dribbles from 3 attempts, and 2 fouls drawn.
The kid is very talented. If you need any more convincing: in his 31.5 career nineties played in the Serie A — starting in 2017/18, when he was only 18 years old — he’s tallied 13.3 non-penalty expected goals and 6.2 expected assists, which comes out to 0.62 non-penalty xG + xA per 90 minutes.
While he hasn’t been a consistent starter for a whole campaign yet, he’s been a crucial player for Bologna since moving away from Atalanta’s incredibly talented forward line. For this reason, one more season in Italy may not be a bad idea, but I believe that whenever he decides to make the jump to a bigger side, he’ll be ready. With that in mind, let’s identify some of those sides who should be looking to bring Barrow in.
Note: All stats are from the 2019/20 season for Europe’s big five domestic leagues. Players needed to have at least 1,000 league minutes played in order to qualify. All stats are from FB Reference. All positions are from Wyscout. All stats are measured per 90 minutes.
Identifying Similar Teams
To start, let’s find some clubs who are playing in a similar manner to Bologna statistically, which can hopefully help ease his transition into the new system. To measure team similarity, I’ll be using the same methodology that I described in my last article, breaking it down across three aspects of play: attacking, defending, and possession.
These are the metrics used in each of the three categories:
Attacking: Shots on target, non-penalty xG per shot, passes into penalty area, crosses into penalty area, % of shot-creating actions that were live ball passes, % of shot-creating actions that were dead ball passes, % of shot-creating actions that were dribbles, attacking third touches, and attacking penalty area touches.
Defending: Possession-adjusted tackles in each third, possession-adjusted pressures in each third, % of tackles made in each third, % of pressures made in each third, and pressure success rate.
Possession: Average possession, passes completed, pass completion rate, progressive distance of passes, % of pass attempts that are long, passes into final third, through balls, switches, touches in defensive penalty area, touches in defensive third, touches in middle third, progressive distance of carries, and % of total progressive distance (passing+carries) that came from passing.
Note: These metrics were all scaled with a standard scaler before calculations.
All 97 other sides in the big five leagues were then compared to Bologna for each of these three categories using euclidean distance. In a slight change from last article, I’ve decided to switch to measuring the twenty-five sides with the lowest average distance, and these twenty-five sides will move on to the next stage.
Identifying Similar Players — Base Stats
Now, this doesn’t quite match the last article, where I was looking for someone’s replacement. Here I’m more trying to identify players who Barrow himself could replace or take over for at another club. To find similar center forwards to the Gambian, euclidean distance will once again be used, only this time with some different categories and metrics involved as we’re looking at players instead of teams. These are the categories and the specific stats they entail:
Shooting and Finishing: Non-penalty expected goals, shots on target, shots on target rate, and non-penalty expected goals per shot.
Passing and Creativity: Expected assists, key passes, passes into the penalty area, progressive distance of passes, progressive passes, and shot-creating actions.
Dribbling and Ball Control: Successful dribbles, dribble success rate, progressive distance of carries, fouls drawn, and turnovers (miscontrols+dispossessions).
Defending and Aerial Ability: Possession-adjusted tackles+interceptions, possession-adjusted successful pressures, pressure success rate, aerial wins, and aerial win rate.
Here’s who compares best to Barrow out of our similar teams:
Some interesting names pop up here, and you’ve probably already got some good ideas for where Barrow could slot in. But, to analyze this shortlist further, let’s go deeper into their numbers.
Identifying Similar Players — Style Metrics
I’ve created different style metrics for each position group (full backs, center backs, center midfielders, attacking midfielders/wingers, and center forwards), and they are each designed to help represent a player’s actual traits and tendencies on the pitch. So instead of looking at who is the best at dangerous passing (or has the most of ___ stat) per se, it looks for players who, when they get on the ball, are very likely to attempt a risky, dangerous pass.
These are each of the style metrics that I came up with for center forwards, along with their ideologies and the stats that go into them:
Style Metric 1: Aerial Presence
Ideology: Identify center forwards who are very active in the air, and, well, give their team a strong presence aerially.
Stats Involved: Aerial wins, aerial win rate, and headed passes.
Top Center Forward: Joselu (Alavés)
Bottom Center Forward: Gervinho (Parma)
Style Metric 2: Poacher
Ideology: Identify center forwards who largely position themselves inside the box, and whose primary job is to find shooting opportunities close to goal.
Stats Involved: % of touches that are inside the attacking penalty area, % of touches that end up in shots on target, and non-penalty xG per shot.
Top Center Forward: Mauro Icardi (PSG)
Bottom Center Forward: Matías Vargas (Espanyol)
Style Metric 3: Deep Lying
Ideology: Identify center forwards who tend to drop off and help their teams more in terms of progressing the ball.
Stats Involved: % of total passing distance that is progressive and % of completions that are progressive passes.
Top Center Forward: Lucas Pérez (Alavés)
Bottom Center Forward: Samuel Di Carmine (Hellas Verona)
Style Metric 4: Dangerous Passer
Ideology: Identify center forwards who are most likely to produce a dangerous pass when they get on the ball. It’s not who provides the most cumulative danger with their passing, but whose passes are most likely to be risky and into dangerous areas.
Stats Involved: % of passes that are into the penalty area or through balls and expected assists per completion.
Top Center Forward: Gonçalo Paciência (Eintracht Frankfurt)
Bottom Center Forward: Wesley Moraes (Aston Villa)
Style Metric 5: Dribbler
Ideology: Identify center forwards who are likely to dribble forwards and progress the ball with it at their feet whenever possible.
Stats Involved: Shot-creating dribbles per touch, successful dribbles per touch, and % of total distance of carries that is progressive.
Top Center Forward: Gervinho (Parma)
Bottom Center Forward: Guido Carrillo (Leganés)
Style Metric 6: Retaining Possession
Ideology: Identify center forwards who work to keep possession for their team and avoid giveaways. This one seems to be a bit more about quality, but there are some very talented players, and some who play in possession-based systems — Moussa Dembélé, Victor Osimhen, Duván Zapata, Dominic Calvert-Lewin— who rank very low. So don’t think of those at the top as just “these players are better at keeping the ball”, rather that they are a bit more calculated and controlled with the risks they take.
Stats Involved: xTurnovers — Expected turnovers is a simple multiple regression in Excel, still using the basic FB Reference data. In short, it looks at how much a player should be turning the ball over (miscontrols+disposessions) based on factors like in which third (and attacking penalty area) and how often they get on the ball, how risky they are with it (dribble attempts), and how often they’re under pressure.
xTurnover over/under performance, pass completion rate, and progressive passes.
Top Center Forward: Josip Iličić (Atalanta)
Bottom Center Forward: Kike (Eibar)
Style Metric 7: Pressing Engine
Ideology: Identify center forwards whose teams are very reliant on them for intense pressing high up the pitch.
Stats Involved: % of team’s attacking third tackles, % of team’s attacking third pressures, pressure success rate, and possession-adjusted attacking third pressures.
Top Center Forward: Dries Mertens (Napoli)
Bottom Center Forward: Mario Balotelli (Brescia)
Style Metric 8: Tracking Back
Ideology: Identify center forwards who tend to drop back defensively and help their side defend closer to their own goal.
Stats Involved: % tackles made in middle or defensive thirds and % of pressures made in middle and defensive thirds.
Top Center Forward: Luca Waldschmidt (Freiburg)
Bottom Center Forward: Anthony Martial (Manchester United)
Let’s use these style metrics to look even more closely into our shortlist.
Top Pick: Memphis Depay Replacement for Lyon
This seems to be the best statistical move for Barrow by far, and it’s actually very probable that Lyon will be looking for a Depay replacement soon. While the Dutchman didn’t get his move to Barcelona this summer, it’s hard to imagine his time in France running on much longer. This would leave the door open for our boy, Barrow, to step in.
All the logistics seem to match up as well. Barrow is a bit less than 5 years younger than Depay, making the move very enticing from a Lyon perspective, as they’d be able to get some fresh legs and potentially usher in a new era up top (we’ll see what they do with Moussa Dembélé as well). Then, while very highly-rated, Barrow still isn’t a “mega-wonderkid” and should still be within Lyon’s price range — especially if they can fetch a pretty penny for Depay. Barrow is currently valued at $19.8 million on Transfermarkt — obviously not a perfect tool, but still pretty indicative — and his arranged permanent transfer to Bologna — which is set to go through in July 2021 — is listed at just $14.3 million.
Back to the actual stats side of things, and this move just seems like a no brainer. Lyon came up as the 12th most similar side to Bologna, Depay was Barrow’s closest match for base stats, and he was a close second for style metrics.
The main traits shared by the two are their tendency to drop deep and help with linkup/progression, as well as being very comfortable carrying the ball and driving at defenders.
Ultimately, I feel like this move has a ton of potential. If Barrow can add a bit more polish to his game and get a full season of production under his belt in 2020/21, it could coincide with Depay’s departure to give him the perfect stepping stone to the next level. Either way, be sure to keep an eye out for him.
Final Thoughts
If you read my last piece on here, you’ve probably noticed that this one is way shorter. Well, I made the executive decision to leave out the video aspect and speed up the process.
It’s obviously still a very important part of the identification and recruitment process — and yes, I have watched Barrow and Depay over the years — but for now, it’s not something I’ll be including in these articles.
Once again, I have also decided to leave out some more advanced metrics like xT, PV, or VAEP, for time-related reasons. The main goal for me starting this series was simply to explain my style metrics and work them in with other data, so I am going to continue to “streamline” the process to get one of these done for each position group before everyone’s 2019/20 numbers are completely irrelevant.
