It has been a frustrating few weeks for Wilson Isidor as he looks to try and end a six-game without a goal, but with five goals already to his name, how does he compare statistically to last season’s ‘strikers’.
Nazariy Rusyn, Mason Burstow and Luis Hemir all struggled last year when asked to lead the line. Over the course of last season, they had a combination of 55 Championship games and an astonishingly low return of three goals. Isidor of course already has five in 18 games, in his first season in English football. Starting with XG stats, a stat that can be a bit misleading. For example, you could have a chance from a yard out where the keeper pulls of a world class save and it would have an XG of one, then you look at Isidor’s goal against Coventry, and you would argue due to the technique of the finish it would be quite low on XG.
My source for the stats were fbref. Isidor has seen an XG of 5.1 so far this season, which is only 0.1 above his actual tally. Compare that to last season’s strikers, with Rusyn managing 2.8 on XG, with Burstow and Hemir sitting at 2.0 and 1.7 respectively. That saw Rusyn underperforming by 0.8, Burstow by exactly one goal and with Hemir not scoring during our last campaign, he underperformed on his by 1.7. So, when looking at this, bear in mind Isidor has played less than the others, it’s already easy to see the difference.
Next, I want to look at shots per 90, which allows us to see how good they are at getting into good goalscoring positions. Rusyn led this stat last season, with an average of 3.06 shots per 90. Hemir is next up with 1.95 shots per 90 with Burstow only managing 1.51. Then you look at Isidor, he has managed 2.65 shots per 90. Rusyn leading on that one, however it’s not exactly a positive considering his lack of goals.
The final stat is goals per shot, which gives us an idea of how wasteful they are. Isidor has taken 38 shots with five goals, going at a rate of 0.13. Nazariy Rusyn scored twice from 27 shots at a rate of 0.07 goals per shot with Mason Burstow sitting on the same rate with the Chelsea loanee managing one goal from just 15 shots. I would argue all aren’t great, with for context league top scorer Borja Sainz managing 0.23 shots per goal.
Overall, I think Speakman has done a good job getting Isidor, who has certainly been an improvement from the options we had last year. I have seen a few people calling for him to be dropped, but I think we have been that used to strikers not scoring that maybe some people are already panicking. For example, during our promotion season in League One, Ross Stewart went on a six-game goalless drought and he still ended the season on 24 goals in the league, plus his to goals in the play-offs. I am not saying Isidor is going to reach those numbers, but I am trying to say every striker goes through goalless periods, and we need to back him as it does feel like once one goes in, hopefully against Norwich on Saturday, he will be flying.
