Correlation FC

Post-season player awards for 2024-25

The season has wrapped up, so it's time to look at top performers across a number of positions. At Correlation FC, we prefer data to opinions, so we'll try to keep things data-centric.

From a Brentford perspective, based on availability and performance, a number of the player of the year choices are somewhat straightforward:

• Striker of the year: Yoane Wissa
• Winger of the year: Bryan Mbeumo
• Attacking midfielder of the year: Mikkel Damsgaard
• Defensive midfielder of the year: Christian Norgaard
• Central defender of the year: Nathan Collins
• Fullback of the year: Keane Lewis-Potter
• Goalkeeper of the year: Mark Flekken

So, rather than taking our usual Brentford-centric view, we'll look more broadly across the Premier League to see who the top performers were, and where Brentford's stars fit in. We'll use the data available on FBref.com to help with our analysis. You can view a detailed review of our methodology at the bottom of this article.

Forwards

The league is full of talented offensive-minded players who can play in multiple positions across the front line. For our purposes, we're dividing players into an imperfect split of strikers and wingers.

Strikers

What makes a good attacker? Obviously the ability to put the ball into the net, but we look beyond goals into other areas like receiving progressive passes, shots on target, touches and carries in dangerous areas, and so on.

Top strikers in the Premier League in 2024-25 (source FBref.com)

Rank	Player	Point total (out of 15)
1	Matheus Cunha	8.55
2	Alexander Isak	7.94
3	Yoane Wissa	7.68
4	Erling Haaland	7.33
5	Ollie Watkins	6.64

At the top of the list we see Cunha, based on his excellent season with Wolves. His position is a bit difficult to classify, but he is often considered a striker, so we've included him here. Brentford's own Wissa finished 3rd overall in this ranking.

Wingers

Like strikers, wingers come in different shapes and forms, but the leading winger profile of the moment is a natural goal scorer that can also spray the ball into the box from wide positions, and is a key outlet to teammates on the break or counter attack.

Top wingers in the Premier League in 2024-25 (source FBref.com)

Rank	Player	Point total (out of 15)
1	Mohamed Salah	10.01
2	Bryan Mbeumo	7.61
3	Bukayo Saka	6.78
4	Cole Palmer	6.58
5	Luis Diaz	6.21

Salah seems to be getting better with age. His league leading goals and assists total helped to cement his position at the top of the table. Brentford's Mbeumo finished his best Premier League season in second place. Arsenal's Saka would have competed for the top 2 positions if he had remained healthy, but still came in a respectable 3rd despite only playing in about half of his team's minutes.

Midfielders

The glue that holds any team together, a top midfielder is essential to any team. Over-simplifying things greatly, we will divide the world of midfielders into to categories – attacking midfielders and defensive midfielders.

Attacking midfielders

Attacking midfielders excel at pushing the ball forward. Beyond goals and assists, we look at an array of passing skills the result in shots and goal scoring opportunity for their teammates.

Top attacking midfielders in the Premier League in 2024-25 (source FBref.com)

Rank	Player	Point total (out of 18)
1	Bruno Fernandes	11.43
2	Cole Palmer	10.86
3	Alex Iwobi	9.79
4	Martin Odegaard	9.53
5	Mikkel Damsgaard	9.41
5	Bruno Guimaraes	9.41

Despite United having a poor season, Fernandes put in some really strong numbers and was one of their few bright lights. Brentford's Damsgaard had his best season yet, and was responsible for much of Brentford's forward movement up the pitch.

Defensive midfielders

Like attacking midfielders, defensive or holding midfielders are trusted by their teammates to help get them out of trouble, frequently receiving the ball in difficult situations. They're cool under pressure. Without the ball, they're looking to disrupt their opponents through tackles, interceptions and blocks, and will go to the air to win aerial duels when called on.

Top defensive midfielders in the Premier League in 2024-25 (source FBref.com)

Rank	Player	Point total (out of 14)
1	Moises Caicedo	8.48
2	Ryan Gravenberch	7.60
3	Idrissa Gana Gueye	7.05
4	Youri Tielemans	7.04
5	Christian Norgaard	6.92

Caicedo is proving to be the strong player that Chelsea hoped he would be when they signed him from Brighton. Bees captain Norgaard was vital to their success this season, bringing strength defensively and adding several key goals throughout the season.

Defenders

The last line before the goalkeepers, defenders are at least in theory all about stopping the other team. Tall centre backs moving forward for set pieces and tricky fullbacks pressing forward and making overlapping runs do confuse things slightly. Let's look at how things shaped up for the backs this season.

Centre backs

Stereotypically big and strong, we look at players who and strong in the air, block shots and passes, and generally frustrate their opponents. As more teams are playing out from the back, the best defenders are expected to have a high number of touches, consistently make perfect passes and help keep the collective blood pressure low.

Top centre backs in the Premier League in 2024-25 (source FBref.com)

Rank	Player	Point total (out of 16)
1	Virgil van Dijk	10.84
2	Nathan Collins	10.23
3	Max Kilman	9.96
4	Levi Colwill	9.39
4	Murillo	9.39

No surprise to see van Dijk at the top of the list again. Collins put in an excellent year for Brentford, not missing a single minute and leading the league in blocked shots and near the league lead in touches in the defensive 3rd.

Fullbacks

This hybrid position attracts a wide range of players and requires excellent fitness and a diverse skill set.

Top fullbacks in the Premier League in 2024-25 (source FBref.com)

Rank	Player	Point total (out of 14)
1	Antonee Robinson	8.74
2	Aaron Wan-Bissaka	7.11
3	Milos Kerkez	7.00
4	Josko Gvardiol	6.98
5	Pedro Porro	6.95

Fulham's Robinson leads the way here, with West Ham newcomer Wan-Bissaka putting in a strong season as well. Brentford's Keane Lewis-Potter didn't make the top 5. It'll be interesting to see if he remains at left back next season or makes his way back up to the left wing.

Goalkeepers

The ones with the odd coloured shirts and the padded gloves. The goalkeepers. It would be easy to just look at wins, goals against and clean sheets. However, modern Premier League keepers are expected to do much more than that now, with the top keepers being confident with the ball in their feet and capable of making accurate passes, under pressure to practically anywhere on the pitch.

Rank	Player	Point total (out of 10)
1	Jordan Pickford	7.17
2	David Raya	7.11
3	Robert Sanchez	6.83
4	Ederson	6.66
5	Nick Pope	6.39

Pickford's strong performance makes you wonder where Everton may have finished without him. Sanchez faced a lot of criticism but his numbers proved to be solid. Matz Sels shared the Golden Glove award with Raya, but missed out on the top 5 here due to his low numbers in stopping crosses and sweeper keeper actions outside of the penalty area.

Methodology

To compare players from across the league, we've used readily available statistics from the wonderful FBref.com website. We've utilised their Premier League player data and compiled a comprehensive view of the 2024-25 season.

For the end-of-season awards, we have only considered outfield players who played at least the equivalent of 15 90-minute matches, so 1350 minutes or more. Players with fewer minutes were not considered, and their data was removed from consideration.

Once we had our group of players, we calculated minimum and maximum values for more than 150 different types of data. We then calculated a player's relative performance, per stat, compared to their peers. With touches in the middle third, for example, the player with the most touches was Virgil van Dijk with 1,827 touches. His relative score would be 1.0 – the player with the fewest, a total of 179, would receive 0.0. For some statistics, like average shot distance, a lower value is considered better, so a different formula is used, but the approach is the same. The player with the lowest average shot distance gets a 1.0, the player with the highest average gets 0.0, and the players in the middle get a proportional score somewhere between 0 and 1.

While it's interesting to compare all players across all 150+ stats, that's not really how football works. You wouldn't typically expect your star striker to also lead the league in blocked shots or touches in the defensive penalty area. So, for each position, we have taken a subset of targeted metrics to better compare strikers to strikers, attacking midfielders to attacking midfielders, and so on.

For goalkeepers, we took the same basic approach, but started from a GK-specific dataset with 44 entries and whittled that down to 10 key metrics for keepers that had played 900 or more minutes.

We were happily surprised to see so many Brentford players in the top 5s. The results are 100% based on data, though subjective humans did choose which data to show, so there is of course some bias inserted. For this analysis, we have not weighted any of the metrics - for the next iteration of this exercise, we may apply weighting so that a striker's goal total may carry more value than their progressive passes received, for example.

Metrics used

As mentioned above, FBref made nearly 200 different data fields available for the analysis of outfield players and goalkeepers. The one metric that was common across all positions was "90s played", an indicator of high availability - the value of a top player is diminished if they are frequently unavailable. Here's a list of the rest of the metrics that we've chosen to use for each position.

Strikers

Goals, non-penalty expected goals, progressive passes received, shots, shots on target per 90 minutes, goals per shot on target, passes into the penalty area, times fouled, touches in the attacking 3rd, touches in the penalty area, take on success percentage, carries into the final third, carries into the penalty area, aerial duel winning percentage.

Wingers

Goals, assists, non-penalty expected goals, non-penalty goals minus expected goals, key passes, crosses into the penalty area, shot creating actions per 90 minutes, goal creating actions per 90 minutes, touches in the attacking penalty area, carries into the penalty area, progressive passes received.

Attacking midfielders

Goals, assists, expected assisted goals, pass completion percentage, key passes, passes into the attacking third, passes into the penalty area, crosses into the penalty area, progressive passes, shot creating actions per 90 minutes, goal creating actions per 90 minutes, touches in the middle 3rd, touches in the attacking 3rd, take on success rate, progressive carry distance, carries into the penalty area, passes received.

Defensive midfielders

Assists, total completed passes, pass completion percentage, total tackles won, blocked shots, blocked passes, interceptions, clearances, touches in the defensive penalty area, touches in the defensive 3rd, touches in the middle 3rd, passes received, aerial duel winning percentage.

Centre backs

Progressive carries, progressive passes, total passes completed, pass completion percentage, progressive passing distance, total tackles won, tackle win rate, shots blocked, passes blocked, interceptions, clearances, touches in the defensive penalty area, touches in the defensive 3rd, total aerial duels won, aerial duel winning percentage.

Fullbacks

Assists, expected assisted goals, total pass completions, progressive passing distance, crosses into the penalty area, shot creating actions per 90 minutes, total tackles won, passes blocked, interceptions, touches, take on success rate, progressive carry distance, progressive passes received.

Goalkeepers

Goals against per 90 minutes, save percentage, wins, clean sheet percentage, penalty kicks saved, post-shot expected goals minus goals allowed per 90 minutes, launched pass completion percentage, crosses stopped percentage, defensive actions outside the penalty area per 90 minutes.

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