Thread by @SadioIogist, A Thread exposing Georginio Wijnaldum, the most useless footballer on the planet; [...]

A Thread exposing Georginio Wijnaldum, the most useless footballer on the planet;

If you watch Wijnaldum play you will not see him doing much, often it looks like he's ghosting from games entirely, the argument against this from many LFC fans is that he has an important "role" in the team and offers a lot that they eye can't see, so lets look at the stats.

I am going to break down stats from every aspect of a midfielder from offensive to defensive contribution and everything in-between to get a better idea of what he actually does. I'll also compare him to our other midfielders, Lets start with goal scoring:

All Stats from the Premier league + UCL this season.

Minutes per goal - 585

This isn't very good from Wijnaldum meaning Ox, Keita and Lallana were more prolific scorers last season but nobody expects this to be one of Wijnaldums strengths, so what about creativity?

Wijnaldum has failed to register assist in his last 2 seasons of football so I won't even bother showing the stats, but what about his overall creativity?

Wijnaldum has an xA per90 of 0.04

This places him in the bottom 30% of midfielders in Europe's top 5 leagues for xA.

He also 1.38 Open play shot creating actions per 90 which again is in the bottom 29% of midfielders in Europe. So clearly creativity is not his strength, but what about buildup play and ball progression?

Wijnaldum has an xGBuildup per90, which is a metric that measures a players contribution to attacking moves without them making the final pass, of 0.33. This is the second lowest out of all our midfielders (above ox).

He also has a progressive distance (passes and dribbles) of 253 per 90 which again places him in the bottom 25% of midfielders in Europe, so again clearly deep buildup play and ball progression is not his main strength.

So lets move onto what most people would associate his game with, that's ball retention and defensive play.

Let start with ball retention, Wijnaldum is dispossessed 1.26 times per 90 minutes which is the most out of all our midfielders except Ox.

This also is in the bottom 30% of midfielders in Europe showing it really isn't as impressive of an attribute as some people make out. He also only completes 62% of his dribbles (bottom 28%)

Now lets talk defending. pAdj = Possession adjusted so it's fair for teams that have more of the ball.

pAdj Tackles - 1.41
pAdj Interceptions 0.87

Those are both the lowest numbers in our squad and again place him in the bottom 50% and 30% of midfielders respectively.

He also is a very average presser, being the least effective out of all our midfielders, only making 4.91, again in the bottom 25% in Europe.

So while he doesn't make many defensive actions per game that doesn't make him a bad defender.

His tackle/dribbled past rate which shows how effective of a tackler he is, is 14.7%, that means when a player dribbles at him 85.3% of the time they will get past him. This is in the bottom 1% of midfielders in Europe. That's right 99% of all midfielders are better tacklers...

That's an absolutely embarrassing stat and needless to say the worst in the squad and one of the very worst in Europe.

So we've deduced he does't make many defensive actions and when he does he has an abysmal success rate.

Unless I'm missing some glaring aspect of football I'm pretty sure all these stats cover most of what a midfielder can do, and he very very rarely breaks into the top two thirds of all midfielders.

This shows he isn't well rounded at all and has absolutely no obvious strengths as well as some glaring weaknesses. You can argue that stats don't show the whole picture but detailed metrics like I have used clearly do. I hope this thread helps open some peoples eyes.

End of thread.

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