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The Improved Luis Suarez | Player of the Year? | Stats: 12/13 Vs 13/14

After a season laced with controversy,  a summer filled with rumours of a potential move away from Anfield and a new season to begin with an eight match ban, many fans were seriously sceptical as to what Luis Suarez would bring to Liverpool in 2013/14. Many doubted his loyalty and questioned whether his heart would be at Liverpool this season. Luis Suarez though has answered all of those questions with unbelievable performances and notched up statistics that all the rival teams would dream of from their front men!

Improved Suarez

Luis Suarez has been in unbelievable form this season, having just scored his 24th goal for Liverpool in 2013/14. He’s now gone past his total of 23 last term where he took 33 games to score them however this season it’s taken him only 23 appearances to surpass that total. He’s improved in terms of creating goals and creating clear-cut chances too. He leads the way in the Premier League with 10 goal assists in contrast he had only managed 3 after 23 appearances last term. However as we’ve mentioned many times on our #AIPodcast and on this website we feel assists are a statistic that relies heavily on the goal scorer to put the chance away therefore making it a two way relationship.

Suarez Creativity

The clear-cut chance is a much better metric to analyse and Suarez had created 10 of these chances after 23 games last season. This season he’s leading the charge in this category also and has created an astonishing 18 clear-cut chances for his team mates. So Suarez leads in pretty much all of the major statistics this season – a shoe in, surely, for the Player of The Year this year?

Last season Suarez had created 65 chances after the same amount of games played, he’s improved slightly this season to 67 which is not a major difference however in Suarez’ next ten games, in 2012/13, he created 25 chances to get to a total of 90 chances created last term. It would be an impressive feat for Suarez to replicate that number this season – scoring over 25 goals and creating 90 chances isn’t achieved by your “average Joe” – you’ve got to be special, “World Class” even!

What’s really impressive is the quality of chances created by Suarez. After 23 games 15% of his total chances last season were clear-cut chances and he’s eclipsed that by improving to 27% of his total chances this season (23 games) being clear-cut opportunities. That’s a phenomenal improvement from the Uruguayan International and one that no Liverpool supporter would have expected after his pre-season antics.

Suarez 23 Game Creativity Comparisons:

12/13 Mins Per Chance Created: 32 mins
13/14 Mins Per Chance Created: 31 mins

12/13 Mins Per Clear-Cut Chance Created: 207 mins
13/14 Mins Per Clear-Cut Chance Created: 115 mins

The key this season has been the improvement in creating clear-cut chances for his side meaning a higher chance of scoring for Liverpool. Luis Suarez is undoubtedly the creative King of the Premier League at this moment in time.

Key

Suarez Stats Slider

Scroll images for Suarez the stats comparison

[image_sliders]
[image_slider link=”#” source=”http://eplindex.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Suarez-Creativity-first-23-12-13.png”] Suarez Creativity First 23 games in 12-13 [/image_slider]
[image_slider link=”#” source=”http://eplindex.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Suarez-Creativity-23-13-14.png”] Suarez Creativity from 23 appearances in 2013/14 [/image_slider]
[image_slider link=”#” source=”http://eplindex.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Suarez-Goals-first-23-12-13.png”] Suarez Goals Stats First 23 games in 2012-2013 [/image_slider]
[image_slider link=”#” source=”http://eplindex.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Suarez-Goals-23-13-14.png”] Suarez Goals Stats from 23 appearances in 2013/14 [/image_slider]
[/image_sliders]

Suarez Goals

At this point last season Luis Suarez had scored 17 goals (as showed above in the images) however he’s gone 7 goals better already this season!  His clear-cut conversion percentage was better in the first 23 games last season where he converted 54% whereas he’s converted exactly half, or 50%, this term.

Despite that the improvement is clear here – Suarez has become much more clinical this season. He’s attempted 6 fewer shots, comparatively in the first 23 games, but improved his shot accuracy from 47% to 55% and improved his conversion percentage from 17% to 22%. The stats really do not lie in the case of Luis Suarez!

Suarez 23 Game Goal Scoring Comparisons:

12/13 Mins Per Goal: 122 mins
13/14 Mins Per Goal: 86 mins

12/13 Mins Per Goal Involvement: 103 mins
13/14 Mins Per Goal Involvement: 61 mins

An astonishing improvement with the simple numbers above – the Goal Involvement stats are goals and assists combined which shows how many goals Luis was directly involved in – and they show how influential Suarez has been so far this season for Liverpool. Liverpool have scored 73 goals this season and Luis Suarez has been involved in 34 which is 46.5% of them. However if you add his his 3 penalty wins this season that’ll mean 37 he’s helped Liverpool score which moves up the percentage to 50.6% – meaning he’s been involved in just over half of Liverpool’s 73 goals!

Surely the stats above are enough to award Luis Suarez the Player of The Year award for 2013/14, an award I believe he deserved last season when he created 90 chances and scored 23 goals in 33 games (which no other player achieved), unfortunately his disciplinary issues cost him that award last season. I’m hopeful there’ll be no repeat of the loss in discipline and that Luis Suarez can go on this season to grab 30 goals and claim the prize that’s rightfully his whilst also pushing Liverpool to finish exactly where they have wanted to be for the last five years: the Champions League.

Could he have enough effect to push them all the way? That’s something we’ll have to wait and find out as it happens! For me though – Luis Suarez should be awarded the player of the year award now because no one else is touching these numbers this season!

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