Victor Moses or Matt Jarvis? Which is better value? | Stats

Over the last day both Matt Jarvis and Victor Moses have had transfers agreed for them by their respective clubs Wolves and Wigan. The projected deals are worth £10.75m and £9m which raised a few eyebrows, especially on Twitter yesterday with everyone saying that West Ham would be paying over the top for Jarvis with Moses going at £9m.

Immediately I thought I’d do a very brief comparison of the two players and raise the question – are they really even comparable? Are they a similar type of player?

The answer is no. They’re not similar players at all. Whilst Jarvis is your more creative winger, Moses is a wide attacker, he will dribble and shoot more than he will cross in a ball and the statistics from the 2011/12 season do show this (Red text highlights better player in that metric).

Now as is clear in the image to the left Matt Jarvis is far more impressive when looking at this comparison as a creative player whilst Victor Moses’ best attributes prove that he’s more of a direct winger.

Jarvis certainly crossed the ball a lot more, his accuracy was better from a lot more crosses, he obtained more goal assists and created chance at a better rate creating a chance every 45 minutes and Moses every 78 minutes. The characteristics of a more creative player for Matt Jarvis then? Agreed?

As for direct players the stats certainly show Moses in this bracket of player. If you look at the shooting it’s Victor Moses that seems to attempt to shoot a lot more often than Jarvis – 47 mins per shot to 104 mins per shot. He also hits the target a lot more often with 107 mins per shot compared to 235 mins per shot.

The dribbling stats take a similar story to shooting – a much higher dribble attempt stat for Moses with 210 compared to 86 but that translates to a dribble attempt every 15 minutes for Victor Moses in comparison to every 32.8 minutes for Jarvis.

For us it’s pretty clear that they’re different types of wide players – one a lot more of a winger with crossing and creative ability and the other more wanting to be direct by running at players and then shooting.

However the one comparable statistic is the goals scored one. Matt Jarvis scored two more goals in a relegated team than Victor Moses did. He also played less minutes than Victor did  therefore his minutes per goal value is 353 minutes per every goal and Victor Moses averages a goal every 536 minutes. Impressive from Jarvis in a relegated side.

So for value it depends on what you really want? Do Chelsea need a creative player? Not really, they have creativity in abundance with Hazard and Mata but what they do want is a direct player trying to attack and getting shots off on goal although Moses will need to improve upon his chance conversion at Chelsea if he wants to regularly play in the side as he’s converting chances at the level of Liverpool from last season which is not very good at all.

For West Ham fans we believe the Matt Jarvis value is also correct – he’s a lot more creative than Moses, he’s scored more, converted more and crossed the ball in a lot more than Moses and you’d think Jarvis is the type of player West Ham would need.

As far as comparisons go this was a difficult one to do, although both players play out wide they are totally different types of players which is why the stats are so different, nevertheless it was a worthy exercise and one that should leave both London teams supporters pleased that the players they are getting are going to providing characteristics that their team maybe lacks a little at the moment.

All of the stats from this article have been taken from the Opta Stats Centre at EPLIndex.com – Subscribe Now (Includes author privileges!) Check out our new Top Stats feature on the Stats Centre which allows you to compare all players in the league & read about new additions to the stats centre.