TITLE winning Manchester City dominate our Premier League team of the season based purely on objective data.
There is also room in the XI for Tottenham striker Harry Kane, Manchester United talisman Bruno Fernandes and Aston Villa’s Jack Grealish.
With the 2020-21 season on the verge of conclusion, SunSport teamed up with Carteret Analytics to determine the true best XI.
Every player was picked based purely on their ‘Carteret Rating’ – a method that is entirely objective and incredibly accurate at defining a player’s influence on matches.
Ilkay Gundogan is the standout player of the season.
The German midfielder has weighed in with vital goals this term, with his 13 strikes helping fire Pep Guardiola’s side to the title.
The former Borussia Dortmund player’s performances have been all the more important with main striker Sergio Aguero missing the majority of the campaign.
Arguably the strongest element of Man City’s title charge has been their rock solid defence, and the data shows their ENTIRE back four make the best XI.
Regular starters Joao Cancelo, Ruben Dias – who has been named Football Writers’ Player of the Year, John Stones and Oleksandr Zinchenko all make the side.
Man City have conceded a league low of just 32 goals.
Behind them, Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson Becker makes the XI. He just edged out Ederson.
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Carteret Ratings for the Prem XI…
This is how the XI rated with Carteret…
Ilkay Gundogan – 285.8
Bruno Fernandes – 284.6
Harry Kane – 283.7
Jack Grealish – 280.4
Ruben Dias – 269.7
Mohamed Salah – 263.7
Kevin de Bruyne – 256.0
John Stones – 231.9
Alisson Becker – 231.9
Joao Cancelo – 214.7
Oleksandr Zinchenko – 213.0
Gundogon is joined in midfield by the consistently brilliant Kevin De Bruyne. The Belgian pass king has clocked 11 assists this term.
Manchester United player of the year Fernandes makes up the midfield three. Data shows that the Portuguese playmaker is statistically the second best player of the season – just missing out to Gundogan, despite scoring more goals with 18 this season in addition to his 12 assists.
GREAL DEAL
According to the data, Jack Grealish makes it in despite missing a chunk of the season with a shin injury.
The Aston Villa star just edged out Son Heung-min with the stats showing that the Tottenham player tailed off in the second half of the season.
Mohamed Salah’s position on the right of the front three comes at the expense of Riyad Mahrez. The Man City ace has been brilliant of late – but his more mediocre early part of the season damaged his stats.
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There have been some suggestions Salah has not been at his best this term with Liverpool’s title defence falling apart. But the Egyptian has still hit a whopping 22 goals.
That puts him level with Kane at the top of the scoring charts as they head into the final game of the season.
The Spurs forward has been at his usual lethal best and completes the XI. On top of the goals are a table-topping 13 assists.
A bit more on how the ratings work…
At Carteret Analytics we have developed the quantitative analysis utilised to good effect in investment banking for trading strategy, portfolio optimisation, derivatives pricing and hedging, and risk management by our sister corporate finance firm, Carteret Capital – and applied it to football.
In particular, our work provides an objective measure of how good a football player really is – removing all the subjective noise and opinions.
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
