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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/...ics-that-show-how-striker-has-faded-bkm8fz35l
What’s wrong with Harry Kane? How an ankle injury changed the way England’s captain plays
new
James Gheerbrant
September 4 2018, 5:00pm, The Times
Kane is taking fewer shots at goal since suffering an ankle injury against Bournemouth in MarchRex Features
On March 11, at the Vitality Stadium, in the 29th minute of a match against Bournemouth, Harry Kane rolled his ankle in a collision with Asmir Begovic. Christian Eriksen curled a probing, dipping ball around Nathan Aké into an area around eight yards out from goal and Kane — who was offside — met it with a sidefoot half-volley, a fraction of a second before Begovic, leading with his legs, clattered him, inadvertently buckling Kane’s right ankle under his left leg.
I was there: it was a drizzly, low-key sort of Sunday afternoon, coming on the heels of Tottenham’s epic Champions League defeat by Juventus, and initially it didn’t seem like a particularly climactic or defining moment in the career of England’s best player. Kane didn’t yelp, or writhe in agony; instead, he held his ankle with a look of mild discomfort rather than alarm, and hobbled off the pitch minutes later. But of course, this was three months out from the World Cup, and this is a country that owes its knowledge of the word “metatarsal” to the sports pages in the spring months of even-numbered years. Kane left the stadium wearing a plastic boot, and his fitness became a topic of mild national neurosis in the following weeks: would he be fit enough to excel at the World Cup?
Of course, we all know what happened next. Kane returned a month later, making a 16-minute cameo against Chelsea on April 1 before starting the subsequent game against Stoke City on April 7. He scored in that game and got five further goals in the remaining six matches of the season. Then he went to the World Cup where he won the Golden Boot as, behind Kane’s six goals, Gareth Southgate’s team produced the deepest tournament run by an England team in a generation. Oh, and he’s the favourite for BBC Sports Personality of the Year. All was well. Harry Kane was fine.
And yet, is he? On a superficial level, Kane has undeniably continued to score at something like the same rate he did before he got injured. All told, since that Chelsea game he has 15 goals in 19 matches for club and country at a rate of 0.79 goals per 90 minutes; a bit behind the 0.99 goals per 90 he was clocking last season before he got injured, but still very much in the realm of an elite striker.
It’s perfectly legitimate to think that this is the only thing which really matters, because in a very real way, of course, it is. If Kane continues to score goals at this rate, he’ll remain an enormous asset to Tottenham and England and continue to be bracketed among the best strikers in world football. But dig a little deeper and it’s clear that, since his injury, Kane has not been the same player.
Think of a striker like an iceberg. The goals are, like the bit above the waterline, the only bit that anyone really notices. But they’re only a small fraction of the whole. Beneath the surface lies a huge body of work that helps to keep those goal numbers buoyant. And while Kane’s goalscoring contribution still looks monolithic, since his injury the rest of his game has melted away alarmingly.
Perhaps the main thing that makes Harry Kane great, the statistical footprint of his excellence, is the incredibly high number of shots he takes. In the 2016-17 season, for example, he took 3.9 shots per game, according to statistics provided by Opta, and prior to his injury last season he was averaging 5.96 shots a match.
You might not think that shot volume is particularly impressive or important in itself; after all, surely anyone can take a few digs at goal? In reality though, taking lots of shots is one thing that reliably sets great strikers apart. As well as Kane, the other leading per-90-minute shooters in Europe’s top four leagues last season were Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Lorenzo Insigne, Edin Dzeko and Robert Lewandowski, so the correlation between great strikers and strikers who shoot often is clear.
And if you think about what distinguishes Kane and his ilk on the pitch, this makes sense. Imagine, for example, a situation where the ball is rolling across him 20 yards out, perhaps on his wrong foot, with a defender closing in. Lesser strikers might take a touch, allowing the defender to recover and meaning the chance is lost. What Kane is brilliant at, at his best, is setting himself and getting the shot off early.
Except that, since his injury, Kane hasn’t really been doing that. In fact, his shot numbers have collapsed alarmingly. In 19 matches for club and country since his return, he has only averaged 2.57 shots per 90 minutes — by far the lowest level of his career. To put it even more starkly: Kane played 42 matches prior to his injury last season and hit five or more shots in 29 of those games. He was regularly shooting eight or ten times a match. But in the 19 matches since his injury, he has only hit five shots once: against West Bromwich Albion in May.
That would be less concerning if Kane was still generating the same quality of shots, but again, the numbers tell a more inauspicious story. Throughout his career, apart from a small dip in the 2014-15 season, Kane has consistently operated at slightly over two shots on target per 90 minutes. Last season, before he got injured, he was getting off 2.46 shots on target per 90 minutes. But since he came back after his injury, the frequency with which Kane works the keeper has dwindled — he is averaging 0.99 shots on target per 90 minutes since his return. His expected goals — a measure of the chance quality of the shots Kane takes - have also been cut in half, from 0.85 per 90 minutes prior to his injury last season, to 0.43 since his return.
Why? One clue may lie in the areas that Kane is operating in. Since his injury, it has appeared that Kane isn’t getting into the box as much, and that’s borne out by the numbers. Last season prior to his injury, he was taking an average of 7.20 touches in the opposition box per match. Since his return, the figure has dropped to 4.35.
Unlike strikers blessed with extreme pace, Kane doesn’t often get clear in behind — he scores a lot of his goals in the crowded spaces of the penalty box, with defenders in close attendance. It may be that the lingering effects of his injury, either physical or psychological, are making him more reluctant to prowl in those heavily policed areas where strikers risk getting crunched.
So, should we be worried? Well, yes and no. On one hand, it’s fairly clear that for now, Kane is not the same sort of striker he was before his injury. The numbers that buoyed his phenomenal goalscoring feats in past seasons have subsided and for the moment, show little sign of returning to previous levels. On the other hand, he is still scoring, and there are signs that Kane is adapting to being a different sort of striker with a reasonable amount of success.
Take those typical Kane shots, where he sets himself early and takes the shot first time. The numbers suggest these have become less frequent. Opta data shows that the percentage of touches Kane takes that are shots climbed steadily from 7.5 per cent in 2014-15, to 9.4 per cent in 2015-16, 9.9 per cent in 2016-17, and then shot up to 16.0 per cent last season before he got injured. Since his return, the figure has fallen to 7.9 per cent. In other words, he’s taking fewer first-time shots.
However, what’s enabling Kane to score at something approaching previous levels is the fact that his shot conversion has shot up. Last season, before he got injured, he was scoring 14.8 per cent of his shots. Since his return, he’s scoring 25 per cent, a level he has only got near in one previous season (2016-17). One possible, if optimistic, interpretation is that Kane has adapted to the constraints of his recovery by being a lot more selective in the shots he takes on. As long as he can keep his shot conversion at that astronomically high level, he’ll be able to ride out the decline in his shot volume without seeing a huge drop-off in his goals.
So is Harry Kane broken, or better than ever? The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. All the data suggests that the ankle knock he suffered in March, although it looked innocuous, was a significant turning point, one that has fundamentally altered Kane’s game and compromised a lot of what made him great. And yet, he has still found a way to keep scoring.
More at the link above....
What’s wrong with Harry Kane? How an ankle injury changed the way England’s captain plays
new
James Gheerbrant
September 4 2018, 5:00pm, The Times
Kane is taking fewer shots at goal since suffering an ankle injury against Bournemouth in MarchRex Features
On March 11, at the Vitality Stadium, in the 29th minute of a match against Bournemouth, Harry Kane rolled his ankle in a collision with Asmir Begovic. Christian Eriksen curled a probing, dipping ball around Nathan Aké into an area around eight yards out from goal and Kane — who was offside — met it with a sidefoot half-volley, a fraction of a second before Begovic, leading with his legs, clattered him, inadvertently buckling Kane’s right ankle under his left leg.
I was there: it was a drizzly, low-key sort of Sunday afternoon, coming on the heels of Tottenham’s epic Champions League defeat by Juventus, and initially it didn’t seem like a particularly climactic or defining moment in the career of England’s best player. Kane didn’t yelp, or writhe in agony; instead, he held his ankle with a look of mild discomfort rather than alarm, and hobbled off the pitch minutes later. But of course, this was three months out from the World Cup, and this is a country that owes its knowledge of the word “metatarsal” to the sports pages in the spring months of even-numbered years. Kane left the stadium wearing a plastic boot, and his fitness became a topic of mild national neurosis in the following weeks: would he be fit enough to excel at the World Cup?
Of course, we all know what happened next. Kane returned a month later, making a 16-minute cameo against Chelsea on April 1 before starting the subsequent game against Stoke City on April 7. He scored in that game and got five further goals in the remaining six matches of the season. Then he went to the World Cup where he won the Golden Boot as, behind Kane’s six goals, Gareth Southgate’s team produced the deepest tournament run by an England team in a generation. Oh, and he’s the favourite for BBC Sports Personality of the Year. All was well. Harry Kane was fine.
And yet, is he? On a superficial level, Kane has undeniably continued to score at something like the same rate he did before he got injured. All told, since that Chelsea game he has 15 goals in 19 matches for club and country at a rate of 0.79 goals per 90 minutes; a bit behind the 0.99 goals per 90 he was clocking last season before he got injured, but still very much in the realm of an elite striker.
It’s perfectly legitimate to think that this is the only thing which really matters, because in a very real way, of course, it is. If Kane continues to score goals at this rate, he’ll remain an enormous asset to Tottenham and England and continue to be bracketed among the best strikers in world football. But dig a little deeper and it’s clear that, since his injury, Kane has not been the same player.
Think of a striker like an iceberg. The goals are, like the bit above the waterline, the only bit that anyone really notices. But they’re only a small fraction of the whole. Beneath the surface lies a huge body of work that helps to keep those goal numbers buoyant. And while Kane’s goalscoring contribution still looks monolithic, since his injury the rest of his game has melted away alarmingly.
Perhaps the main thing that makes Harry Kane great, the statistical footprint of his excellence, is the incredibly high number of shots he takes. In the 2016-17 season, for example, he took 3.9 shots per game, according to statistics provided by Opta, and prior to his injury last season he was averaging 5.96 shots a match.
You might not think that shot volume is particularly impressive or important in itself; after all, surely anyone can take a few digs at goal? In reality though, taking lots of shots is one thing that reliably sets great strikers apart. As well as Kane, the other leading per-90-minute shooters in Europe’s top four leagues last season were Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Lorenzo Insigne, Edin Dzeko and Robert Lewandowski, so the correlation between great strikers and strikers who shoot often is clear.
And if you think about what distinguishes Kane and his ilk on the pitch, this makes sense. Imagine, for example, a situation where the ball is rolling across him 20 yards out, perhaps on his wrong foot, with a defender closing in. Lesser strikers might take a touch, allowing the defender to recover and meaning the chance is lost. What Kane is brilliant at, at his best, is setting himself and getting the shot off early.
Except that, since his injury, Kane hasn’t really been doing that. In fact, his shot numbers have collapsed alarmingly. In 19 matches for club and country since his return, he has only averaged 2.57 shots per 90 minutes — by far the lowest level of his career. To put it even more starkly: Kane played 42 matches prior to his injury last season and hit five or more shots in 29 of those games. He was regularly shooting eight or ten times a match. But in the 19 matches since his injury, he has only hit five shots once: against West Bromwich Albion in May.
That would be less concerning if Kane was still generating the same quality of shots, but again, the numbers tell a more inauspicious story. Throughout his career, apart from a small dip in the 2014-15 season, Kane has consistently operated at slightly over two shots on target per 90 minutes. Last season, before he got injured, he was getting off 2.46 shots on target per 90 minutes. But since he came back after his injury, the frequency with which Kane works the keeper has dwindled — he is averaging 0.99 shots on target per 90 minutes since his return. His expected goals — a measure of the chance quality of the shots Kane takes - have also been cut in half, from 0.85 per 90 minutes prior to his injury last season, to 0.43 since his return.
Why? One clue may lie in the areas that Kane is operating in. Since his injury, it has appeared that Kane isn’t getting into the box as much, and that’s borne out by the numbers. Last season prior to his injury, he was taking an average of 7.20 touches in the opposition box per match. Since his return, the figure has dropped to 4.35.
Unlike strikers blessed with extreme pace, Kane doesn’t often get clear in behind — he scores a lot of his goals in the crowded spaces of the penalty box, with defenders in close attendance. It may be that the lingering effects of his injury, either physical or psychological, are making him more reluctant to prowl in those heavily policed areas where strikers risk getting crunched.
So, should we be worried? Well, yes and no. On one hand, it’s fairly clear that for now, Kane is not the same sort of striker he was before his injury. The numbers that buoyed his phenomenal goalscoring feats in past seasons have subsided and for the moment, show little sign of returning to previous levels. On the other hand, he is still scoring, and there are signs that Kane is adapting to being a different sort of striker with a reasonable amount of success.
Take those typical Kane shots, where he sets himself early and takes the shot first time. The numbers suggest these have become less frequent. Opta data shows that the percentage of touches Kane takes that are shots climbed steadily from 7.5 per cent in 2014-15, to 9.4 per cent in 2015-16, 9.9 per cent in 2016-17, and then shot up to 16.0 per cent last season before he got injured. Since his return, the figure has fallen to 7.9 per cent. In other words, he’s taking fewer first-time shots.
However, what’s enabling Kane to score at something approaching previous levels is the fact that his shot conversion has shot up. Last season, before he got injured, he was scoring 14.8 per cent of his shots. Since his return, he’s scoring 25 per cent, a level he has only got near in one previous season (2016-17). One possible, if optimistic, interpretation is that Kane has adapted to the constraints of his recovery by being a lot more selective in the shots he takes on. As long as he can keep his shot conversion at that astronomically high level, he’ll be able to ride out the decline in his shot volume without seeing a huge drop-off in his goals.
So is Harry Kane broken, or better than ever? The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. All the data suggests that the ankle knock he suffered in March, although it looked innocuous, was a significant turning point, one that has fundamentally altered Kane’s game and compromised a lot of what made him great. And yet, he has still found a way to keep scoring.
More at the link above....
