The Premier Leagues midweek fixtures brought an amazing amount of goals and talking points. Luis Suarez, Eden Hazard and Mesut Ozil all shone on the night playing a vital part in their teams victory.
Initially we’ll look at record breaker Luis Suarez. Each of his four goals against Norwich (moving him to eleven in four appearances against them) demonstrated each of the key attributes that make him the most deadliest striker in the Premier League.
- His first goal was a combination of brilliance and arrogance. Only a player with full belief in his own abilities would be able to pull off such a magnificent half-volley from 40 yards away with such perfection.
- His second goal was a pure poachers goal – in the right place at the right time and a lovely finish in an awkward position.
- The hat trick goal (and the best of the lot) demonstrated his world class silky skills as he flicked the ball over his opponent and lashed the ball into the corner of the goal from outside of the box.
- The fourth goal was the perfect dead-ball free kick. His third goal from distance on the night and it was a rasping curling effort right into the top corner.
Luis Suarez is scoring a goal every 62.15 minutes, involved in a goal every 53.9 minutes and is creating a chance every 33.7 minutes. No other player can boast statistics like these so far this season. He’s well on the way to beating his tally of last season and help fire Liverpool back into the Champions League.
As his player dashboard from FourFourTwo.com illustrates Luis Suarez was a menace to the Norwich defence for the fourth game running.
Eden Hazard also displayed his own masterclass at the Stadium of Light where he scored two and created a goal to ensure Chelsea took all three points back to the Bridge. Hazard was in full flow dribbling past his opponents on twelve occasions throughout the game (shown below in the dashboard). Both of Hazard’s goals were excellent finishes into the bottom right corner, the first a long distance finish and the second saw him charge into the box from left to right and arrow a shot into the corner. Hazard is creating a chance every 36 minutes so far this season as well as sitting in third place in the overall creativity table with 32 chances created.
Hazard played a crucial part in levelling the game as Chelsea conceded first creating Frank Lampard’s opening goal with a lovely floated ball into the six yard box making it very difficult for Lampard to miss. Hazard went onto create three other chances in the game for his team-mates.
Mesut Ozil continued an excellent start to his Premier League career notching up his third goal but also created four chances on the evening. The pass from Aaron Ramsey for his goal was exquisite but Ozil exhibited excellent attacking play with the run off of the defender to find himself one on one with the goalkeeper and he finished with aplomb.
Ozil’s qualities lie in his creativity and this shone through against Hull as he created two chances in open play and two from corners. Ozil has so far created the most goal assists (6) and sits in second place for most chances created (33). From all of Ozil’s chances 76% are via open-play and 24% via set-play so he’s a threat for opponents from anywhere on the pitch. He’s creating a chance every 29 minutes and proving full value for the £40m that Arsenal invested in him – as they now sit four points clear at the top of the Premier League table as we go into the busy festive period.
Full Attacking Stats for all three players from the midweek fixtures appear below courtesy of our EPLIndex Stats Centre:
