The 2022 PFA awards are just around the corner, but rather than relying on the Professional Footballers Association to determine who has been this season’s top performers, football analysts at BetVictor have taken matters into their own hands.
Using data scouting techniques, the BetVictor supercomputer has crunched the numbers assessing every Premier League player by their statistical performance over the 2021-22 Premier League season.
The Stats Based Team of the Year:
Players have been given a “Performance Rating” which is a measure (on a scale of 1-100) of how well they have performed compared to other players in a similar position. A score of 50 would mean a player is performing averagely.
The algorithm is designed to find the starting XI with the most optimised output per 90-minutes. Put simply, it is eleven players who do a lot of good things the most frequently.
Bruno Guimarães vs Rodri:
It was very much a surprise to see Bruno Guimarães rank ahead of the likes of Rodri and Declan Rice in this position – for the record Rodri ranked in 2nd place. However, after taking a deep dive into his performance data it appears as though Newcastle United have bought a player around which their takeover ambitions can be built.
| Per 90 Stat | Guimarães | Rodri |
| Goals | 0.44 | 0.22 |
| Assists | 0.09 | 0.06 |
| npxG | 0.25 | 0.08 |
| xA | 0.16 | 0.04 |
| Progressive Carries | 4.7 | 6.41 |
| Progressive Passes | 2.96 | 5.59 |
| Ground Duels Won | 8.9 | 3.3 |
| Ground Duel Success % | 56.98 % | 50.73 % |
| Interceptions | 1.65 | 1.25 |
