Passes per Chance Created | Alternative look at Premier League Creativity

A quick analysis for you today – we’ve recently been analysing players using a statistic that indicates which players are creating chances with the least number of passes. Each chance has to be created via a pass and this is an interesting way to see which players are creating chances the most often in terms of their passes.

We usually analyse using the minutes stats so we’d have minutes per chance created but using the number of passes also is a good indicator of how creative the player is. We can also analyse with the number of touches but we will be looking at that next week.

Passes Per Chance

For now take a look below at the Top 20 players whom required the least amount of passes to create chances for their clubs.

Luis Suarez requires only 12 passes to create a chance for Liverpool and Nicky Shorey and Aaron Lennon aren’t far from this number either. Leighton Baines, Gareth Bale and Ricky Lambert are all creating chances less than every 15 passes which is pretty impressive.

Gareth Bale is certainly dangerous creatively as he is with scoring goals this season and surprisingly Stewart Downing makes an appearance on this chart in 10th place which a lot of supporters would not be expecting. Rickie Lambert and Damien Duff are also enjoying good seasons on the creative front.

Passes Per Clear-Cut Chance

A totally different bar chart below with regards to clear-cut chances. A clear-cut chance is one that should be scored by the player it is created for which is usually a free  attempt at goal (un-marked), a one-on-one with the goalkeeper or a penalty (just to name a few). It certainly is a subjective statistic but those that collate the statistics are trained in exactly the same way at Opta.

Theo Walcott is most impressive here creating a clear-cut chance with every 40 or so passes. Victor Anichebe is a surprise entry here and Anthony Pilkington is also in the top 3. Manchester United show their dominance in this statistic (being the league leaders in creating clear-cut chances) with four players out of the Top 20 in the league here. Suarez drops down to 10th here and Leighton Baines (most creative player in the Premier League) is at 9th.

They are certainly interesting statistics and ones that show the most creative players so far this season. Baines, Suarez, Lennon, van Persie, Taraabt, Duff, Snodgrass and Lambert appear in both charts which indicates their creative effectiveness this season. We’ll be using this statistic a lot more and we may even add it to our Top Stats area under creativity over the next few weeks to enable us to continue to analyse it.

If you’re looking for a full list of the stats that we’ve used to create the graphs please take a look at the pages below. If you are using these stats on your own blog please do credit eplindex.com.

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Passes Per Chance Created Stats | Passes Per Clear-Cut Chance Created Stats