James Ward-Prowse

[Chine]

Just now, abdomlahor said:

Who says no? 

Conor + KD + Trez + 30m ?

[Laughable Chimp]

I've said this several times already but I figured might as well expand it further. JWP is just Douglas Luiz with elite dead-ball ability. I'm going to try and show that once you remove set pieces from both of these players stats, their statistics become remarkably similar. Actually, I'd argue Luiz has the better edge here.

Firstly, goals. JWP seems to have the clear edge here right? 8 goals compared to Luiz's 0. However, 3 of those goals came from penalties. 4 came from direct free kicks. That means JWP only scored 1 goal in open play last season which isn't much better than Luiz's 0.

 

Passing wise, it seems like he ticks a lot boxes and I'm not going to argue he's bad at passing. But I will argue that Luiz is a better passer in open play than JWP. Luiz has a passing percentage of 84.8 percent compared to JWP's 80.8 percent. Unfortunately, I could not differentiate between live-ball passes and dead-ball passes here but to be give the benefit of the doubt, I will say they are about equal here.

However, in terms of key passes its a different story. Luiz averages 0.55 live key passes per 90. JWP averages 0.47 key passes per 90. Slightly lower than Luiz. Both had 0 open play assists last season. The difference in starker in terms of expected assists. 0.02 open play xA per 90 for JWP, 0.06 open play xA per 90 for Luiz. The stats are these are taken from understat instead of fbref like I usually do.

Lastly, someone may point out that JWP is good at passing progression and taken at face value, it seems like that in this category he clearly beats Luiz. He has 264.82 yards progressive passing distance per 90 compared to Luiz's 183.5 per 90. However, the key difference here is that JWP attempts a lot more live ball passes than Luiz does in a match, around 17 passes more. This is a result of the fact that JWP is in possession of the ball for Southampton a lot more than Luiz is for us. 52.9 times in posession in open play per 90 for Luiz compared to 69.39 for JWP. We can divide progressive passing distance per 90 with amount of attempted live-ball passes to get a fairer statistic. The result? An average of 4.41 yards progressed per pass for JWP compared to 4.20 yards for Luiz.

Imo this isn't a big enough difference for me to say JWP is better at Luiz in progressive passing. Also, since I didn't remove progressive passing distance as a resuld from open of dead ball passes due to lack of data. Theoretically, it should put JWP at an advantage here because he should have more progressive passing distance from free kick situations compared to Luiz. As a result, that 0.21 yards difference is likely even smaller if not an advantage for Luiz instead. Despite the ambiguousness of the conclusion in this last category, I think its clear to see from the statistics I've brought up, JWP is not a better passer in open play than Douglas Luiz at the very least.

 

I've touched a bit on shot creation above in mentioning of key passes and xA but even if we look as well at passes before the final pass(in open play) Luiz is better. 1.36 shot creating live passes per 90 for Luiz compared to 1.03 for JWP. Luiz also has advantage in terms of goal creating live passes per 90 with 0.16 to JWP's 0.11. I would accept that this is not a massive advantage to Luiz. But consider as well the other stats involving expected assists in open play and key passes mentioned above where Luiz is consistently better even if not by much. And furthermore the fact that Luiz is on the ball a lot less than JWP, yet is still posting better numbers than him in open play tells me that Luiz is most likely just a better passer than JWP, at least in terms of live ball assists and shot creation.

 

Anyone expecting JWP to come in and shore up our defence will be in for a rude awakening. Defensively, they're ridiculously similar in almost every category that fbref highlights. Maybe Luiz is the better shot blocker but that's it. There is no other individual stat I feel the need to highlight here. They're basically the same defensively.

 

Dribbling and carrying wise, Doug is better no contest. Twice more succesful dribbles per 90 than JWP. 8 percent more dribbling success percentage to Doug. Slightly more progressive carrying distance than JWP but again, also consider that Luiz is in posession of the ball much less than JWP so to have more progressive carrying distance in spite of it is impressive. Slightly higher progressive carries, and carries into the 18 yard box as well.

 

In conclusion, I don't think there is any category that James Ward-Prowse is better in statistically in than Douglas Luiz once you ignore dead-ball situations. In fact, the evidence suggests that Luiz might be the slightly better player. Like, this is not a case of oh, JWP is better in some cases(ignoring dead ball situations) and Luiz is better in others. Imo its clear that Luiz actually has the slight edge or is equal in JWP in almost every open play situation. I would hypothesize that the similarity in a lot of their statistics is due to them playing essentially similar roles to each other for both of their teams despite the fact that technically JWP plays as a CM and Luiz plays as a DM.

Those of you who know me also know that I am far from a big fan of Douglas Luiz, I'm not trying to say Luiz is already good enough for us. Rather, I'm trying to say that Ward Prowse isn't good enough for us, at least in open play. That's what my analysis of the statistics tell me. Whether he is good enough once we include his unarguably elite dead ball ability is a question I'm choosing not to answer.

 

 

Edited August 6, 2021 by Laughable Chimp

[Guest av1]

42 minutes ago, Chine said:

Conor + KD + 20m ?

Saints have suffered enough 

[Vive_La_Villa]

7 assists and 5 non penalty goals. Even if he is just a Luiz with a good freekick that return looks worth it to me.

Edited August 6, 2021 by Vive_La_Villa

[Sam-AVFC]

12 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

7 assists and 5 non penalty goals. Even if he is just a Luiz with a good freekick that return looks worth it to me.

You need to ignore another 10 goal contributions because they came from set plays before you can make a 'fair' comparison. 

 

Edited August 6, 2021 by Sam-AVFC

[sne]

JWP is a fine player who's great at FK's, but the price is likely to be too rich for me. And I'm not 100% he offers anything that different to what we already have even thou he short term is better than what we currently have.

[Made In Aston]

23 minutes ago, Laughable Chimp said:

I've said this several times already but I figured might as well expand it further. JWP is just Douglas Luiz with elite dead-ball ability. I'm going to try and show that once you remove set pieces from both of these players stats, their statistics become remarkably similar. Actually, I'd argue Luiz has the better edge here.

Firstly, goals. JWP seems to have the clear edge here right? 8 goals compared to Luiz's 0. However, 3 of those goals came from penalties. 4 came from direct free kicks. That means JWP only scored 1 goal in open play last season which isn't much better than Luiz's 0.

 

Passing wise, it seems like he ticks a lot boxes and I'm not going to argue he's bad at passing. But I will argue that Luiz is a better passer in open play than JWP. Luiz has a passing percentage of 84.8 percent compared to JWP's 80.8 percent. Unfortunately, I could not differentiate between live-ball passes and dead-ball passes here but to be give the benefit of the doubt, I will say they are about equal here.

However, in terms of key passes its a different story. Luiz averages 0.55 live key passes per 90. JWP averages 0.47 key passes per 90. Slightly lower than Luiz. Both had 0 open play assists last season. The difference in starker in terms of expected assists. 0.02 open play xA per 90 for JWP, 0.06 open play xA per 90 for Luiz. The stats are these are taken from understat instead of fbref like I usually do.

Lastly, someone may point out that JWP is good at passing progression and taken at face value, it seems like that in this category he clearly beats Luiz. He has 264.82 yards progressive passing distance per 90 compared to Luiz's 183.5 per 90. However, the key difference here is that JWP attempts a lot more live ball passes than Luiz does in a match, around 17 passes more. This is a result of the fact that JWP is in possession of the ball for Southampton a lot more than Luiz is for us. 52.9 times in posession in open play per 90 for Luiz compared to 69.39 for JWP. We can divide progressive passing distance per 90 with amount of attempted live-ball passes to get a fairer statistic. The result? An average of 4.41 yards progressed per pass for JWP compared to 4.20 yards for Luiz.

Imo this isn't a big enough difference for me to say JWP is better at Luiz in progressive passing. Also, since I didn't remove progressive passing distance as a resuld from open of dead ball passes due to lack of data. Theoretically, it should put JWP at an advantage here because he should have more progressive passing distance from free kick situations compared to Luiz. As a result, that 0.21 yards difference is likely even smaller if not an advantage for Luiz instead. Despite the ambiguousness of the conclusion in this last category, I think its clear to see from the statistics I've brought up, JWP is not a better passer in open play than Douglas Luiz at the very least.

 

I've touched a bit on shot creation above in mentioning of key passes and xA but even if we look as well at passes before the final pass(in open play) Luiz is better. 1.36 shot creating live passes per 90 for Luiz compared to 1.03 for JWP. Luiz also has advantage in terms of goal creating live passes per 90 with 0.16 to JWP's 0.11. I would accept that this is not a massive advantage to Luiz. But consider as well the other stats involving expected assists in open play and key passes mentioned above where Luiz is consistently better even if not by much. And furthermore the fact that Luiz is on the ball a lot less than JWP, yet is still posting better numbers than him in open play tells me that Luiz is most likely just a better passer than JWP, at least in terms of live ball assists and shot creation.

 

Anyone expecting JWP to come in and shore up our defence will be in for a rude awakening. Defensively, they're ridiculously similar in almost every category that fbref highlights. Maybe Luiz is the better shot blocker but that's it. There is no other individual stat I feel the need to highlight here. They're basically the same defensively.

 

Dribbling and carrying wise, Doug is better no contest. Twice more succesful dribbles per 90 than JWP. 8 percent more dribbling success percentage to Doug. Slightly more progressive carrying distance than JWP but again, also consider that Luiz is in posession of the ball much less than JWP so to have more progressive carrying distance in spite of it is impressive. Slightly higher progressive carries, and carries into the 18 yard box as well.

 

In conclusion, I don't think there is any category that James Ward-Prowse is better in statistically in than Douglas Luiz once you ignore dead-ball situations. In fact, the evidence suggests that Luiz might be the slightly better player. Like, this is not a case of oh, JWP is better in some cases(ignoring dead ball situations) and Luiz is better in others. Imo its clear that Luiz actually has the slight edge or is equal in JWP in almost every open play situation. I would hypothesize that the similarity in a lot of their statistics is due to them playing essentially similar roles to each other for both of their teams despite the fact that technically JWP plays as a CM and Luiz plays as a DM.

Those of you who know me also know that I am far from a big fan of Douglas Luiz, I'm not trying to say Luiz is already good enough for us. Rather, I'm trying to say that Ward Prowse isn't good enough for us, at least in open play. That's what my analysis of the statistics tell me. Whether he is good enough once we include his unarguably elite dead ball ability is a question I'm choosing not to answer.

 

 

I'm still amazed that some people on here are so quick to try an offload a Brazil International at the first opportunity. 

Edited August 6, 2021 by Made In Aston

[Thug]

19 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

7 assists and 5 non penalty goals. Even if he is just a Luiz with a good freekick that return looks worth it to me.

The point is, that IF we have another dead ball specialist, suddenly £40-£60m looks like it’s better spent elsewhere.

Bailey’s dead ball stats are very very good.

 

Edited August 6, 2021 by Thug

[JAMAICAN-VILLAN]

" He is just Douglas Luiz with elite set piece and goal delivery " is like saying Ings is just Keinan Davis with superior striking ability .

So you've basically admitted he's better than Luiz, isn't that the basal point/ requirement + positive?

Edited August 6, 2021 by JAMAICAN-VILLAN

[JAMAICAN-VILLAN]

6 minutes ago, Made In Aston said:

I'm still amazed that some people on here are so quick to try an offload a Brazil International at the first opportunity. 

Wesley hasn't done himself many favours to be fair...

Edited August 6, 2021 by JAMAICAN-VILLAN

[Phil Silvers]

3 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

" He is just Douglas Luiz with elite set piece and goal delivery " is like saying Ings is just Keinan Davis with superior striking ability .

So you've basically admitted he's better than Luiz, isn't that the basal point/ requirement + positive?

[sparrow1988]

28 minutes ago, Laughable Chimp said:

I've said this several times already but I figured might as well expand it further. JWP is just Douglas Luiz with elite dead-ball ability. I'm going to try and show that once you remove set pieces from both of these players stats, their statistics become remarkably similar. Actually, I'd argue Luiz has the better edge here.

Firstly, goals. JWP seems to have the clear edge here right? 8 goals compared to Luiz's 0. However, 3 of those goals came from penalties. 4 came from direct free kicks. That means JWP only scored 1 goal in open play last season which isn't much better than Luiz's 0.

 

Passing wise, it seems like he ticks a lot boxes and I'm not going to argue he's bad at passing. But I will argue that Luiz is a better passer in open play than JWP. Luiz has a passing percentage of 84.8 percent compared to JWP's 80.8 percent. Unfortunately, I could not differentiate between live-ball passes and dead-ball passes here but to be give the benefit of the doubt, I will say they are about equal here.

However, in terms of key passes its a different story. Luiz averages 0.55 live key passes per 90. JWP averages 0.47 key passes per 90. Slightly lower than Luiz. Both had 0 open play assists last season. The difference in starker in terms of expected assists. 0.02 open play xA per 90 for JWP, 0.06 open play xA per 90 for Luiz. The stats are these are taken from understat instead of fbref like I usually do.

Lastly, someone may point out that JWP is good at passing progression and taken at face value, it seems like that in this category he clearly beats Luiz. He has 264.82 yards progressive passing distance per 90 compared to Luiz's 183.5 per 90. However, the key difference here is that JWP attempts a lot more live ball passes than Luiz does in a match, around 17 passes more. This is a result of the fact that JWP is in possession of the ball for Southampton a lot more than Luiz is for us. 52.9 times in posession in open play per 90 for Luiz compared to 69.39 for JWP. We can divide progressive passing distance per 90 with amount of attempted live-ball passes to get a fairer statistic. The result? An average of 4.41 yards progressed per pass for JWP compared to 4.20 yards for Luiz.

Imo this isn't a big enough difference for me to say JWP is better at Luiz in progressive passing. Also, since I didn't remove progressive passing distance as a resuld from open of dead ball passes due to lack of data. Theoretically, it should put JWP at an advantage here because he should have more progressive passing distance from free kick situations compared to Luiz. As a result, that 0.21 yards difference is likely even smaller if not an advantage for Luiz instead. Despite the ambiguousness of the conclusion in this last category, I think its clear to see from the statistics I've brought up, JWP is not a better passer in open play than Douglas Luiz at the very least.

 

I've touched a bit on shot creation above in mentioning of key passes and xA but even if we look as well at passes before the final pass(in open play) Luiz is better. 1.36 shot creating live passes per 90 for Luiz compared to 1.03 for JWP. Luiz also has advantage in terms of goal creating live passes per 90 with 0.16 to JWP's 0.11. I would accept that this is not a massive advantage to Luiz. But consider as well the other stats involving expected assists in open play and key passes mentioned above where Luiz is consistently better even if not by much. And furthermore the fact that Luiz is on the ball a lot less than JWP, yet is still posting better numbers than him in open play tells me that Luiz is most likely just a better passer than JWP, at least in terms of live ball assists and shot creation.

 

Anyone expecting JWP to come in and shore up our defence will be in for a rude awakening. Defensively, they're ridiculously similar in almost every category that fbref highlights. Maybe Luiz is the better shot blocker but that's it. There is no other individual stat I feel the need to highlight here. They're basically the same defensively.

 

Dribbling and carrying wise, Doug is better no contest. Twice more succesful dribbles per 90 than JWP. 8 percent more dribbling success percentage to Doug. Slightly more progressive carrying distance than JWP but again, also consider that Luiz is in posession of the ball much less than JWP so to have more progressive carrying distance in spite of it is impressive. Slightly higher progressive carries, and carries into the 18 yard box as well.

 

In conclusion, I don't think there is any category that James Ward-Prowse is better in statistically in than Douglas Luiz once you ignore dead-ball situations. In fact, the evidence suggests that Luiz might be the slightly better player. Like, this is not a case of oh, JWP is better in some cases(ignoring dead ball situations) and Luiz is better in others. Imo its clear that Luiz actually has the slight edge or is equal in JWP in almost every open play situation. I would hypothesize that the similarity in a lot of their statistics is due to them playing essentially similar roles to each other for both of their teams despite the fact that technically JWP plays as a CM and Luiz plays as a DM.

Those of you who know me also know that I am far from a big fan of Douglas Luiz, I'm not trying to say Luiz is already good enough for us. Rather, I'm trying to say that Ward Prowse isn't good enough for us, at least in open play. That's what my analysis of the statistics tell me. Whether he is good enough once we include his unarguably elite dead ball ability is a question I'm choosing not to answer.

 

 

Good post. Cheers for looking into the numbers and breaking down the info and posting it here. It was a good read. Is the analysis of such data part of your job or do you just do it to post it on here? Must be time consuming.

Also, I like that you start your 4th paragraph with "lastly" and then go on to provide 6 more paragraphs.

[Laughable Chimp]

7 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

" He is just Douglas Luiz with elite set piece and goal delivery " is like saying Ings is just Keinan Davis with superior striking ability .

So you've basically admitted he's better than Luiz, isn't that the basal point/ requirement + positive?

I just wanted to add to the debate on his open play ability since that's where most of the debate on his true quality lies. 

For the record, yes I do think he is a better play than Douglas Luiz. The question is if we accept that he is on par with him in open play, we'd essentially be paying 50-60m purely for deadball ability in terms of upgrading the squad if we got him and would that be worth the price.

Edited August 6, 2021 by Laughable Chimp

[Made In Aston]

5 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Wesley hasn't done himself many favours to be fair...

He has barely had a chance. Even then he got a call up to the Brazil squad just before his injury,so can't have been performing too badly. 

[Laughable Chimp]

Just now, sparrow1988 said:

Good post. Cheers for looking into the numbers and breaking down the info and posting it here. It was a good read. Is the analysis of such data part of your job or do you just do it to post it on here? Must be time consuming.

Also, I like that you start your 4th paragraph with "lastly" and then go on to provide 6 more paragraphs.

Thanks. I wish I could do this for a job, for some reason I just love going through the statistics of these players and trying to gather insights from them. 

Just an unemployed, recent uni-grad with way too much time on his hands.

[Thug]

5 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

" He is just Douglas Luiz with elite set piece and goal delivery " is like saying Ings is just Keinan Davis with superior striking ability .

So you've basically admitted he's better than Luiz, isn't that the basal point/ requirement + positive?

Except it’s not like saying that at all really though is it?

it’s more like saying that this new TV is the same as your current tv but with better speakers.  Do you want to buy it for £3000.

And you say ‘well actually I’ve just bought a £3000 surround system, so I don’t really need the better speakers, so I’ll stick to my current TV thanks.’

[dont_do_it_doug.]

24 minutes ago, Sam-AVFC said:

You need to ignore another 10 goal contributions because they came from set plays before you can make a 'fair' comparison. 

 

Sorry but, what? Do goals from dead ball situations not count this season?

[JAMAICAN-VILLAN]

10 minutes ago, Laughable Chimp said:

I just wanted to add to the debate on his open play ability since that's where most of the debate on his true quality lies. 

For the record, yes I do think he is a better play than Douglas Luiz. The question is if we accept that he is on par with him in open play, we'd essentially be paying 50-60m purely for deadball ability in terms of upgrading the squad if we got him and would that be worth the price.

Got you, yes I've suggested the same mate, for the price, in my view, it's not enough of an " improvement ".

However, if we consider how many points those Set pieces potentially provide, the picture might look different. ( Difference between 9th and a European place for example ? ). Small increments matter the higher up the table you go mate.

He single handedly turned us over in a game we could have one, using the won using " difference " you highlighted.

As you noted though, Leon does have very high quality set piece ability as well too.

JWP at half the price and it would be a no brained.

Edited August 6, 2021 by JAMAICAN-VILLAN

[sne]

2 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

 

JWP at half the price and it would be a no brained.

Not sure he'd be of much use then. 

Edited August 6, 2021 by sne

[Phil Silvers]

I think Southampton let him go for less dosh then you'd think. May not happen but I think if it gets done, it will be under 40m.