Last week I dove into Atalanta’s chronic problems in front of net last sesaon. Go ahead and read the full story here. For a quick summary or a refresher, Atalanta’s main problem stemmed from good finishers not getting a lion’s share of the opportunities in front of net. Atalanta’s share of expected goals that went to ‘so-called’ scorers was at its lowest level in years, with La Dea spreading out the goal scoring love too thin. A down year from Duvan Zapata, and Robin Gosens’s absence were the primary root cause of the sharing mentality that resulted.
To combat this next year, Atalanta obviously cannot overlook striker in its summer plans. Even if both Luis Muriel and Duvan Zapata stay in Bergamo – Atalanta is again one injury away from backing itself into a corner once again, calling on whomever to put away goals. Atalanta has been loosely linked with a few names this summer, including Charles de Ketelaere (improbable), and Giovanni Simeone. Given that we’re still in the early days of the summer transfer saga, there’s plenty of times for more rumors to emerge – and for good reason. de Ketelare is likely out of Atalanta’s price range, and there are serious concerns about Simeone’s consistency – which we’ll spell out in the upcoming paragraphs.
Not to pick on Simeone, but it is painfully obvious that Atalanta requires someone who can consistently challenge goalkeepers with good shots, and it may be in La Dea’s best efforts to look elsewhere than El Cholito.
The Concern with El Cholito
No knock on Simeone – he’s a strong striker and had an excellent campaign with 17 goals last year. In addition, he has an excellent work rate, and was second ‘busiest’ striker in providing pressure last year in the league. Only Olivier Giroud applied more pressure per minute of defense than Simeone. In addition, his pressing numbers were 26% higher than Muriel’s and 93% higher than Zapata’s (who never presses!). If Atalanta and Gasperini’s goal is to take the press into overdrive, and maybe take some of the pressure off the attacking midfielders and central midfielders, perhaps Simeone is a good shout.
However, where Simeone still lacks is his finishing. 17 goals is nothing to sneeze at, but when we analyze the data few players in Serie A received as much benevolence from the league’s keepers as Simeone.
The above chart essentially compares goals above or below average based on the quality of shots taken. In Simeone’s case he scored more goals from more improbable chances, suggesting that it is reasonable to posit that he could regress closer to the mean next year – and if he retook the same shots that tallied 17 goals last year, perhaps it only translates into 12 or 13 goals in a future season. Still not a bad return, but it may be an unrealistic expectation for him to bag goals at such a high rate in the future.
Furthermore, Simeone also performs poorly on the expected-goals versus expected-goals-on-target ratio I introduced in my last article. If we focus on the 35 players who tallied 20 expected-goals-on-target over the past four seasons combined, Simeone rates as one of the worst finishers in the league over this span – especially compared to Atalanta’s other current and former talismen.
Atalanta can get away with Zapata’s below average finishing because of his extreme usefulness in buildup play and target-man work. Is Simeone’s pressing value enough to overcome his even worse than Zapata finishing. I’m not sure, but I’m likely to lean towards no.
What Should Atalanta Then Look for in a Striker?
Again on the above chart, Atalanta’s key finishers all are incredibly skilled at peppering the keeper with on-target-shots, and Atalanta should look for more of the same. Secondary traits can still be valuable, but Atalanta should desire strikers that can do the most with the chances they are afforded. It sounds like a no-brainer, but it bares repeating just given how poor Atalanta was in the finishing department last year.
Interestingly, focusing on Serie A, Atalanta may not have that many options to choose from. Focusing on players that are above average on the ratio scale (0.975) – no one really stands out as a desirable option. Everyone’s either too old, or too expensive, or just not valuable enough. Do we really want Andrea Petagna back???
Instead, Atalanta may have to look abroad again. But fear not, bargain hunting, which has always been Atalanta’s favorite game, has now become one of my favorite’s and there may be some interesting options out there for La Dea to consider.
Again, when we’re playing with small-ish sample sizes (and striker’s shots over a season would qualify as that), so there is still a lot of noise in expected-goal data. However, there is still something to glean from looking at finishing, because I can’t think of a good reason why these figures would have to be adjusted based on the league. Football across the world uses the same dimensions for goals, and given expected-goals-on-target is a statistic that strips away everything except the striker’s finishing and the goalkeeper in front of him, it can be a great parameter to compare strikers across leagues.
I landed on six interesting names based on last year’s performance, transfermarkt.com value (and the subsequent ease of signing), and expected threat per 90 to offer some sort of secondary statistic to help solve tie breakers. For comparison, both Luis Muriel and Duvan Zapata rated well on expected-threat-per90 at 0.20 and 0.090 respectively (well, Luis Muriel more or less dominated).
My Preferred Ranking
- Georginio Rutter
- Gianluca Caprari
- Oscar Estupinan
- Sepe Elye Wahi
- Simon Banza
- Jorgen Strand Larsen
Its funny how it works out that my order is nearly identical to ranking the players by their expected threat metrics. For different reasons I landed on Rutter as my first choice.
Playing less than half a season, Rutter was still able to bag eight goals, good for nearly half a goal per ninety minutes, which would translate nicely over a full season of work. Additionally his heat map last season, while sparse, looks to be more central – making it more impressive that he was able to add 0.10 expected threat per match. It looks like he likes to have a bit of fun on the right side, and cut in on his preferred left. As a 20 year old, he could be an interesting value option over Charles de Ketelaere.
The New Hellas Verona Express
Everyone knows how good Gianluca Caprari was last year, and while he is not an out-and-out striker. His finishing and expected threat are too good to ignore. Atalanta is already linked with so many Hellas Verona players thanks to the Tony D’Amico signing – why not add one more, who potentially could be the best of the bunch. The only hesitation there is in going after Caprari is redundancy at attacking midfielder. Caprari would essentially be Jeremie Boga’s replacement – and there is no reason to believe Atalanta moves off of the Ivorian so quickly.
Of Course I Need to Include a Colombian
Perhaps my favorite name of the bunch is Oscar Estupinan. The big Colombian has made a home for himself in Portugal after stints in Ecuador and Turkey – and he was recently awarded his first cap in Atalanta’s match against Saudi Arabia. Estupinan lives in the box, and scored seven goals with his head last year. Atalanta sorely needs another big man that commands attention in the box, and Estupinan could potentially serve as a vice-Zapata. We know Muriel cannot withstand the sustained punishment that comes with being a target-man, but perhaps the bigger and stronger Estupinan could. Plus we’re one step closer to my dream of a majority Colombian Atalanta side! Estupinan is not going to renew with Vitoria this year – and has been linked to some of the bigger clubs in smaller nations like Poland and Greece. Surely he can command a bigger following that that – especially if he’s not asked to be a featured striker….
At the end of the day Atalanta needs reliable scorers, and anything else they can provide on top of that is gravy. While the six names above is nowhere near an exhaustive list of interesting good finishers – it is a decent representation of what’s out on the market, fitted for feasibility of signing. Atalanta could buy high on Simeone, but it would be a dangerous proposition to buy-in on a guy who supremely outperformed his recent goal metrics. Instead, let’s hope Atalanta takes the route of finding guys who neither underperformed or overperformed – hopefully giving us less variance in what the ultimate outcome for them could be next year. Let’s get back to our scoring ways, and as always – Forza Dea!!!
