I’m going to just come right out and say it: when it comes to picking up Actim points, Actim says that Cesc Fabregas and Emmanuel Adebayor are the most efficient players in the league right now.
They don’t KNOW they say that, of course; Fabregas actually turns up in second place on the “Top 100″, while Adebayor turns up in sixth. The secret to their efficiency lies in the “minutes played” column; Fabregas has been on the pitch for 461 minutes, while Adebayor’s been on for 450. Compare that with Drogba, who’s in first place with a whopping 691 minutes.
Or compare it to Fernando Torres, who inexplicably won the “Player of the Month” for September over Drogba. Torres is tied for third with Robbie Keane on the list with 181 points, but he’s had to be omnipresent on the field to get there; Fabregas has done about as much for his team as Torres has in about a third of the time.
Of course, there’s another way of looking at this equation: value per pound sterling. This is a little bit trickier to work with, and I’d planned on leaving it out entirely unless I could find some kind of transfer fee/salary database. That was before Tamir Cohen came along.
Tamir Cohen, for those of you unfamiliar, is a midfielder for Bolton. He’s scored three goals and notched up an assist in his five appearances for the Wanderers this season, which is a nice strike rate for a midfielder. He’s #94 on the “Top 100″, making his first appearance today.
He also cost Gary Megson only £37,000 back in January of 2008.
For a lot of clubs that don’t have Real Madrid money (i.e., every club but Manchester City), the amount of money you’ve paid for a player is going to be an increasingly important figure. Cohen has actually scored 11 goals total for Bolton. Compare him with Fernando Torres, who was also purchased relatively cheaply: for £20 million and Raul Garcia. Torres has scored 46 goals for Liverpool in all competitions, including his eight this season. That comes out to £434,782.61 per goal.
Compare that to Cohen. He’s scored 11 goals in 19 appearances, which is a fantastic strike rate for a midfielder. Factoring in his transfer fee, each of those goals has cost Bolton about £3,363.64. That’s about 1% of the cost of a Torres goal.
That’s not saying that Cohen is a better player than everyone on the list, or that every player should be cheap. It’s a silly comparison, in a way; they play different positions, at different clubs, with different expectations. At the same time, though, there are far more lower league clubs who would kill to have a Tamir Cohen that can never afford a Fernando Torres; if the Actim Index can help identify those players, than it’s a step in the door for the eventual Billy Beane or Theo Epstein of soccer.
Here’re your “quick hits” on the Index this week.
- Debut parties were held for David Dunn (#89), David Nugent (#92), Tamir Cohen (#94), and Joleon Lescott (#100). Lescott’s a little late to the list because of that opening day 6-1 loss that Everton suffered to Arsenal; I’d imagine he’d have been on there awhile back if he didn’t have that on his record.
- Nobody in the Top 100 had a worse game than Steven Gerrard. That loss to Chelsea also saw Gerrard lose seven Actim points, the biggest drop of the weekend. He had a nice cushion and only fell back eight spots (to #18), but it’s worth mentioning that Actim and reality are right in synch here; he was really pitiful in that game.
- Michael Essien was a big reason for that; two out of the last three Chelsea-Liverpool matches have seen Essien tightly marking Gerrard, and it’s no surprise that he pops up on the Top 100 for the third time this season after shutting Gerrard down again.
- Everyone on Arsenal went up. They’ll go back down again once they lose; the end of the year index (when everyone’s played everyone and strength of schedule is removed from the picture) will be interesting.
- Carlos Tevez continues to regress down the index during weeks he doesn’t score. This would tend to indicate to me that he doesn’t actually bring anything else to the table; Drogba, in contrast, also didn’t score and yet still retained the top spot by doing whatever it is you do to gain 35 Actim points.
