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 |