I’m going to skip the formalities here. Your club needs to sign Viktor Gyökeres from Sporting. An elite finisher, ball carrier and duellist, Gyökeres would be an asset to any team that he joined. Despite hitting 10 goals and assists in 6 games at the time of writing, it’s not just his basic metrics that impress – his underlying numbers and individual match performances are even better. In this article, I’m going to show you plots and graphs to reveal the data behind the Swede, who has made the transition from Championship football to Champions League football seamlessly.
Firstly, let’s look at the general shape of Gyökeres’ game last season. A pizza plot, which compares the metrics of forwards in Europe’s Top Five leagues plus the Portuguese and Dutch top divisions, gives us an idea of a player’s relative strengths and weaknesses. As we can see, Gyökeres excels in creativity and shooting compared to other elite forwards. His shooting prowess is highlighted by his 97th percentile ranking for non-penalty goals minus expected, which suggests that Gyökeres is scoring a lot more than a regular player would given the chances he gets. He also seems to get himself into good positions – an 80th percentile ranking for non-penalty xG per shot shows this.
However, Viktor doesn’t only finish chances – he creates them. He ranks in the top quarter of European fodrwards for key passes and open play shot creating actions per 90, suggesting that he is always looking to create for his teammates. He possesses creative volume, but also creative quality, shown by his 94th percentile ranking for expected goals assisted. A lot of his goalscoring and goal creating opportunities stem from his propensity to carry the ball forward. This is initially highlighted by his 94th percentile ranking for carries into the penalty area and his 74th percentile ranking for progressive carries overall.
On the defensive side, Gyökeres isn’t necessarily a pressing forward, with low rankings for blocks and interceptions. However, when he does commit to a challenge, it tends to be for good reason – an 83rd percentile ranking for duel success and a 68th percentile ranking for aerial duels suggest that Gyökeres possesses good physicality that has aided Sporting this season.
I have already mentioned his propensity to carry, but we can take an even closer look at what Gyökeres likes to do on the ball using a ternary plot. This triangle measures forwards for passes, carries and shots per 100 touches and allows us to analyse the proportionality of a player’s actions. For example, Erling Haaland finds himself in the bottom right-hand corner of the plot. This is because he tends to either shoot or carry the ball forward when on the ball. However, he doesn’t tend to look for a pass, being a player that finishes Manchester City’s charges instead of creating them. A player like Kylian Mbappe doesn’t shoot as often when on the ball, predominantly spending his touches on carries, whilst also making passes and shots when possible.
Viktor Gyökeres is somewhere between Mbappe and Haaland. He doesn’t tend to pass as much as Mbappe, which we could see on his pizza plot, but doesn’t shoot as much as Haaland, despite his great finishing ability. It is important to mention that just because Gyökeres doesn’t have a large propensity to shoot doesn’t mean he doesn’t take a lot of shots. He does so much of everything, ranking highly for both carries and shots per 90 – this ternary plot measures tendency, and not output. In any case, we can see that Gyökeres loves to have the ball at his feet and when he does, he is very productive with it.
Now that we have an idea of the type of player Gyökeres is and what his strengths are, let’s take a granular look at this in action. Sporting have had a few dominant performances already this season. We’re going to look at their 5-0 league win against Farense, in which Viktor scored a hattrick.
Viktor’s touches came mainly in the center of the pitch. A player like Joshua Zirkzee, who I took a look at after his Manchester United transfer, found himself taking touches out wide or deeper. Gyökeres isn’t a Zirkzee like player, however, and was often high up the pitch – his territory, where the majority of his touches were taken, even creeps inside the penalty area.
Viktor’s passing isn’t necessarily expansive. Most of his passes in the game against Farense were shot and often backwards. He did attempt two longer ranged passes, but only one came off. He isn’t a deep lying forward by nature; his best work comes in the final third, generating shots. He did attempt four penalty area passes, however, so he shouldn’t be seen as an overly greedy player.
Gyökeres took 8 shots in this match, the most of any player on the pitch. This included one penalty, which he converted. Of those 7 open play shots, 3 were on target, and each shot generated an average of 0.25 xG. For context, Erling Haaland is currently averaging 0.22 non-penalty xG per shot. This ability to consistently create high quality chances is not only down to Ruben Amorim’s tactics and Sporting’s relative strength, but also Gyökeres’ movement in the penalty area.
All of his shots were taken in the box during this game, showing his ability to find spaces in dangerous and congested areas. Funnily enough, despite overperforming on his 2.5 expected goals in this match, Gyökeres is actually underperforming overall this season by one full goal. This means that, given a player’s tendency to converge to expectations, Gyökeres is actually likely to get even better as the season progresses – so watch this space.
It’s not difficult to see just how good Gyökeres is. English fans saw a glimpse of his ability whilst he was at Coventry, and now he is showing his qualities on the European stage, scoring on his Champions League debut. Of course, it won’t be easy to take the Swede from Portugal, with Sporting previously citing a transfer fee of over 100 million euros being needed to sign him. Regardless of this however, with certain players [antony] costing large sums of money seemingly without justification, Viktor Gyökeres is a baller who without a doubt would be worth every single penny to the lucky club that can sign him.
