johnnyteutonic
Full Member
If you look at the PL stats for this season, Rashford's is actually better than Antony's - 34.6 to 31.0. The key thing here though is they're both low - below 50 percentile (ie, sub-average for PL wingers). But this, like headers won %, is a stat that is of doubtful usefulness on its own. If you look at take-ons attempted, it's 4.04 for Rashford, 3.82 for Antony. These are above-average, but not extremely high. If you look at the successful take-ons/90, which is arguably the most useful stat if you're looking at only one, Rahsford's is OK at 1.40, while Antony's is sub-average at 1.19.
For context, Garnacho is 27% (very bad)/7.35 (very high)/1.99, while Sancho is 41.8% (still bad)/4.17/1.74.
Antony is the only United attacker whose miscontrols aren't sub-average, but still not that good (1.84 in the PL). The others; Rashford 2.53, Garnacho 3.97, Sancho 2.65.
Of all those stats, the volume of Garnacho's take-on attempts (7.35/90) is the only one that is top 15 percentiles for wingers/att mids in the PL this season, and no one has even an average PL winger success rate, so it is safe to say this is not a strong area for this team.
If you want to add in Martial, he has a better success rate (50%) than any of the wingers, but he makes very few attempts (2.07/90), giving him 1.03 successful take-ons/90 (which is actually at least above average, for a striker). 2.51 miscontrols/90, also better than average for a PL striker.
Antony's xAG is also really low as well. He's just not making optimal decisions very often at the moment. Rashford's is the lowest out of all of them but I think a bit of that is to do with him spending much more time up top this season because his xAG is even worse than last season (a full 0.05 per 90 lower). Plus I think it's not as big a deal for him because he has so much more goal contributions than all the others, and he's more of an inside-forward anyway.
Also worth mentioning is that as we are not (yet) a high-possession team that spends a lot of time spent in the opposition half applying sustained pressure, I think when you're not succeeding with your take-ons very much, and not being effective once you get past your man, I reckon that is going to be more noticeable as being wasteful as you're not making the most out of the few opportunities you get to take on your man.
For possession, we are 6th in the league, ranking 10.3 percent behind top place City and a full 5 percent less than 5th place Chelsea. Liverpool are 2nd with 60.7, Arsenal are 3rd in the league with 60.5 percent of the ball, and Brighton are 4th with 60.4 percent.
We also rank only 7th in pass completion percentage as a squad, at 80.6 percent, 6.4 percent lower than top place City.
It's also interesting to look at stats like progressing carries per 90, progressive carrying distance, carries into the final third, carries into the penalty box, etc, to see how effective all our wingers are.