The new Diogo Jota is wanted by Liverpool in €100m deal | OneFootball

Hugo Ekitike should be an exciting link.

He isn’t because of two reasons.

Firstly, people see him as a project player and have PTSD from the signing of Darwin Nunez. Secondly, there’s a bit of a misunderstanding when it comes to Expected Goals. WhoScored posted a stat recently, revealing that his 15 league goals this season from an Expected Goals haul of 22.55 was the biggest xG under-performance in the Bundesliga. In other words, he’s a poor finisher.

Having watched Darwin for three seasons, there’s a fear that signing a centre-forward who is an underwhelming finisher is a big mistake. So, in their eyes, there’s no getting away from it. The former PSG man is going to be a dud.

An underperformance isn’t a bad thing though, not if the numbers still appear to be sustainable.

Ultimately, you want attackers who can generate high-quality shots on a regular basis. Finishing can be erratic. But being an elite chance-getter is what is highly sought after in the world of data analysis.

Ian Graham said it in his book.

“A scout or a coach would say, ‘Why do we like this forward?’ His analytics team would respond, ‘He takes loads of really good shots.’ The scout or coach would counter, ‘Yeah, but does he drive inside enough? Does he bring his teammates into play enough?’ ‘But we're playing them up front,’ Graham said. ‘He takes loads of good quality shots. There is literally nothing else to say. All other arguments, they're second-order effects compared to this. But people love to mystify and bring more and more factors into play. A use of the data is just to say: This is the important thing and we might be wrong about it — we sometimes are wrong — but you have to come up with some really good arguments against this one really important thing.’”

“He takes loads of good quality shots. There is literally nothing else to say.”

This is why I have Darwin the benefit of the doubt during his first two seasons at Anfield. Yes, he was missing big chances. And yes, he was making some questionable decisions at times. But he was a centre-forward who created opportunities and got into good positions. He was doing what you want your striker to do.

Across his two full seasons with the Reds, he had an Expected Goals total of 28. That is quite remarkable when you consider a few things. He was adapting to a new country, a new league and a new system. He was also shifted about the pitch with Jurgen Klopp trying different things on multiple occasions.

Yet he still managed an xG of 28 across 3,750 minutes. Without taking penalties.

He was taking high quality shots on a regular basis. Mohamed Salah, for example, had a Non-Penalty xG of 34.1 across this period, having appeared in 5,8000 minutes. So, in a nutshell, 6.1 more xG in an extra 2,050 minutes. This isn’t a stat to show Darwin is better than Salah - he isn’t. It isn’t a stat to say Darwin is as good as Salah - again, he isn’t.

But it highlights how impactful Darwin was in the final third as a goal threat.

You pay insane money for that. Liverpool did just that. You also ignore the misses because, generally speaking, things balance themselves out. In this instance, it didn’t and Darwin scored just 20 times. He was judged on his actual output rather than his threat.

The Nerds in charge at Liverpool will look at the threat though. Usually, you can scale the threat in a better team.

It happened with Diogo Jota. He had an Expected Goals per 90 of 0.45 in his final season with Wolves but averaged just 0.28 goals.

People looked at his return of seven goals and laughed at Liverpool’s decision to spend £40million. The Reds no doubt looked at his xG total of 20 across two seasons in the Premier League with Wolves and thought they were grabbing themselves a bargain. That turned out to be the case, didn’t it?

The same thing happened with Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane. You don’t mind an underperformance if the other metrics are all positive.

If anything, you’d prefer that over an overperformance.

This is why I didn’t want Darwin initially. He had a Non-Penalty Expected Goals total of 14 for Benfica but scored 22 non-penalty goals. Liverpool were paying for his output rather than his underlying numbers. He was running stupidly hot and it didn’t seem sustainable at that rate. Turns out it wasn’t.

Liverpool managed to scale his threat but the one-off season for Benfica of insane overperformance turned out to be an outlier rather than the norm.

So, back to Ekitike. I’m not entirely sure why people are against his signing.

He’s 22, he’s well-rounded in attack and a dual threat, with a Non-Penalty xG Involvement of 0.91 this term on a per 90 basis in the Bundesliga. Of course, Bundesliga tax needs to be applied to this. But for something like £65million, it doesn’t appear that outrageous. Not if Liverpool feel they can scale his threat, or at least sustain it.

Though German media report a fee of €100million would be needed, the likelihood is the Bundesliga side will accept less.

He has a Non-Penalty goals per 90 average of 0.49, per FBref, but has a NPxG90 average of 0.68 from 4.01 shots. Good shot volume, good xG per shot (0.19) average and a huge xG average. Exactly what you want to see from a striker.

His misses don’t appear to impact his confidence either.

For a bit of context here, Darwin was averaging one non-penalty goal per 90 for Benfica during his final season from a NPxG of 0.6 and four shots.