March 27 – Barcelona and Tottenham Hotspur are the only European clubs that have a player in each of the seven categories of a ranking of top performing players over the past three months.
Barcelona have nine players in the top 10s of the seven categories, while Spurs have seven. Spurs keeper Hugo Lloris and midfielder Christian Eriksen top their categories. Lionel Messi heads the ranking of wingers ahead of Liverpool’s in-form Mohammed Salah.
Messi scores the most ranking points of any player. Manchester City also fare well in the ranking with seven players in six categories.
For all their top performing individuals Spurs now have just one competition left in their season that they can realistically win – the FA Cup where they have to overcome Manchester United in the semi final. Manchester United do not have a single player in rankings.
In contrast Barcelona are still in the running for the league, cup and ChampionsLeague honours. Manchester City look to have the Premier League pretty much won and are still in the Champions League.
The ranking by the CIES Football Observatory examines players from the big-5 leagues who performed the best in domestic league matches. Players are ranked by the CIES algorithm that measures the technical performance of players. Only footballers who played at least 45 minutes in eight championship matches are included in the rankings.
To create the ranking points, each player is analysed in six different areas of the game: rigour, recovery, distribution, take on, chance creation and shooting. The club’s match results are also taken into consideration as a weighting factor.
See ranking at http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2017/220/en/
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