Let’s talk about Eduardo for a little bit. Eduardo’s been doing what one might call “spot duty” for Arsenal this season; he’s got four appearances, but all of them were substitutions. All told, he’s managed only 115 minutes of play in the Premier League, which isn’t a particularly high total.
And yet Eduardo appears at #96 on the most recent “Actim Top 100″ list, clocking in with 50 total points. That means that Eduardo’s earning .434 Actim points per minute, making him the most efficient player in the league thus far.
In case your interested, here’re the “Top Five” most efficient players so far this season (along with their current Actim ranking):
- Eduardo, Arsenal (#96; 115 minutes, 50 points, .434 PPM)
- Cesc Fabregas, Arsenal (#20; 206 minutes, 81 points, .393 PPM)
- Emmanuel Adebayor, Manchester City (#1; 360 minutes, 139 points, .386 PPM)
- Nicolas Anelka, Chelsea (#10; 285 minutes, 98 points, .343 PPM)
- Robinho, Manchester City (#95; 150 minutes, 51 points, .34 PPM)
Two of those players – Fabregas and Robinho – have only played in a couple of matches this season due to injury. Eduardo, as I discussed above, has apparently been a “super sub” for Arsenal in the Premier League (he’s started Champions League matches, which aren’t taken into account here). That leaves two players who are not only efficient but are also highly ranked: Anelka and Adebayor.
Of those two, the Adebayor’s performance is the most impressive. Anelka, you see, hasn’t played in every match; Adebayor has. In fact, he’s played in every minute of the season thus far for Manchester City, and in doing so he’s managed to get to the top of Actim’s list and the efficiency list at the same time. That’s pretty remarkable for a guy who finished 31st in the same stat last season.
Here are some of the other fun nuggets from this week’s Actim list:
- A big “Avoiding the Drop” welcome to Yossi Benayoun (#16), Gael Givet (#62), Ryan Giggs (#66), Florent Malouda (#79), Leighton Baines (#80), Abdoulaye Faye (#81), Kamil Zayatte (#91), and Damien Duff (#97); all of these players showed up on the Top 100 for the first time this week. Yossi Benayoun is the most impressive; with three goals and an assist against Burnley, he went from being unlisted to being the twelfth most efficient player in the league and the sixteenth best overall.
- Gael Givet is the first Blackburn player on the list all season; Leighton Baines is also the first Everton player since Steven Pienaar in Week 1 to feature in the list. Portsmouth still hasn’t had a representative break into the top tier (and, frankly, probably won’t have someone all season).
- The big loser of the week? Kenwyne Jones. Jones (who was also in his first week as starter on my fantasy team) managed to drop from #43 to #99; in and of itself, that’s a bad drop, but not the end of the world. Jones also, however, somehow managed to lose seven points on the Actim index; I have no idea what he did last week, but it’s amazing that Sunderland won 4-1 while he was sucking that badly.
When I first started looking at the Actim Index, I had a suspicion that it would tend to overrate players from winning teams. We’ve talked about this before; when a striker gets points for a shut-out or a keeper loses points because his offense can’t score, the good players on teams that are playing the best are going to naturally be rated higher than good players on bad teams. That’s not to say, of course, that Drogba and Adebayor are bad players; they’re clearly tearing through the league at the moment. It’s simply an acknowledgement that the index has limitations, and that those limitations tend to overrate the players for top sides.
However, if we accept that that’s true (and, really, it’s hard to refute it), than we also have to accept that the index is underrating good players on bad teams. If that is indeed the case, than there is a very good possibility that Hull City’s Stephen Hunt – #13 on the Top 100 – may be one of the better players in the Premier League.
You see, Hull City only has managed to get four points out of five games. Almost everyone above him and below him is from Manchester City, Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool, or Tottenham, and according to Actim he’s the fifth best midfielder in the entire Premier League. He’s had a better season, in fact, that Fabregas in terms of total points accrued. In fact, he’s seven spots higher than Fabregas, who is Arsenal’s highest ranked player. The only other anomaly is Wigan’s Hugo Rodallega, but he’s fluctuated wildly based on whether or not he’s scored; Hunt’s stayed pretty much even, adding about twenty-some points a week, in spite of the fact that Hull’s allowed 11 goals (second worst in the league) when he’s on the field.
When you consider the fact that he’s not earning points for being on the winning team or keeping a clean sheet, that’s a pretty impressive performance from the former Reading midfielder.
