Actim Top 100 Index Revisited – Points Per Game Basis

Written by Dan on May 25, 2010

I’ve been mucking around with the Actim Top 100 Index for a good few years now: I used to publish regular updates in an old forum before Aston Villa Central existed. It’s far from perfect, but it’s a pretty decent rule of thumb type of measure.

Someone once asked me whether the Villa players generally do so well because they play so many games. The short answer is yes.

However, they still have to do the business on the pitch since Actim measures contribution to the team. Birmingham City may well have 10 players in the final Top 100, but they’re all rated much lower and that’s reflected in their average score.

But surely there must be a way to make this a fairer comparison? Fernando Torres would surely have placed higher than 34th if he had been able to play more often, right?

Correct.

I can’t do anything about players outside of the regular Top 100, but it’s pretty straightforward to take the 100 players I do know about and apply the standard points per game calculation based on the total number of minutes they’ve played in the Premiership this season.

This is how the final top 20 looked in the regular Top 100 Index:-

Rank Player Team Score
1 Frank Lampard Chelsea 776
2 Didier Drogba Chelsea 703
3 Carlos Tevez Man City 673
4 Nicolas Anelka Chelsea 658
5 Francesc Fabregas Arsenal 636
6 Gabriel Agbonlahor Aston Villa 621
7 Wayne Rooney Man Utd 585
8 Darren Bent Sunderland 581
9 Florent Malouda Chelsea 578
10 Patrice Evra Man Utd 574
11 James Milner Aston Villa 560
12 Richard Dunne Aston Villa 551
13 Antonio Valencia Man Utd 544
14 Carlos Cuellar Aston Villa 538
15 Ashley Young Aston Villa 523
16 Jermain Defoe Tottenham 523
17 Petr Cech Chelsea 518
18 Emmanuel Adebayor Man City 505
19 Leighton Baines Everton 504
20 Craig Bellamy Man City 499

Gabby, Milner, Dunne, Cuellar and Ashley Young all make the top 20. But what happens if I base the table on a points per game calculation?

Excellent question, check it out:-

Rank Player Team PPG
1 Francesc Fabregas Arsenal 26.10
2 Didier Drogba Chelsea 22.79
3 Florent Malouda Chelsea 22.60
4 Fernando Torres Liverpool 22.33
5 Frank Lampard Chelsea 21.69
6 Nicolas Anelka Chelsea 21.65
7 Carlos Tevez Man City 21.11
8 Emmanuel Adebayor Man City 20.54
9 Luis Nani Man Utd 20.05
10 Ryan Giggs Man Utd 19.96
11 Dimitar Berbatov Man Utd 19.75
12 Wayne Rooney Man Utd 19.35
13 Antonio Valencia Man Utd 18.74
14 Craig Bellamy Man City 18.67
15 Gabriel Agbonlahor Aston Villa 18.14
16 Jermain Defoe Tottenham 18.11
17 Ashley Cole Chelsea 18.04
18 Aaron Lennon Tottenham 17.56
19 Vassiriki Diaby Arsenal 16.75
20 Andrey Arshavin Arsenal 16.43

That looks more realistic, no? Gabby is no longer the top ranked English striker, he’s now the second highest ranked English striker, behind Wayne Rooney. Just saying.

So who benefited the most from this re-sort? Liverpool’s Yossi Benayoun was originally ranked 90th with 335 points, but when calculated on a per game basis (points / minutes played x 90 minutes) he’s ranked 21st, an improvement of 69 places, with 16.26 points per game.

Who dropped the furthest after the re-sort? Birmingham City’s Roger Johnson had sat proudly in 42nd place with 407 points – their 2nd highest ranked player after Joe Hart – but since he played every minute of every Premiership game, he fell to 92nd place with just 10.71 points per game.

The worst points per game ratio belonged to Burnley’s Tyrone Mears with 9.00 points per game.

Aston Villa Players Re-Sorted

The only Villa player to move up the table after the re-calculation was Stephen Warnock, everyone else was worse off when their score was expressed on the fairer points per game basis:-

PPG Rank Act. Rank Player Score PPG
15 6 Gabriel Agbonlahor 621 18.14
22 37 James Collins 420 15.96
23 11 James Milner 560 15.88
24 12 Richard Dunne 551 15.83
29 77 John Carew 362 15.46
32 14 Carlos Cuellar 538 14.94
40 15 Ashley Young 523 14.25
60 67 Stephen Warnock 369 12.80
63 23 Brad Friedel 481 12.66
94 66 Stiliyan Petrov 370 10.18