Comparing Paul Pogba's 2014/15 Stats to His 2015/16 Numbers

Paul Pogba is one of the best and most sought-after players in the game today.

The 23-year-old Frenchman is the crown jewel of the rebuilding project that saw Juventus go from back-to-back seventh-place finishes to the verge of a fifth consecutive Serie A title.  With the possible exception of Andrea Pirlo, none of the players sporting director Giuseppe Marotta has signed on free transfers over the last five years—and it's an impressive list—has had more impact on Juve's recent success.

His rise has been so meteoric, and come at such a tender age, it's very easy to forget how young he actually is—and that he's still developing as a player.

That, though, is evident when analyzing his statistics over the last two years.  The numbers show a very different player dealing with much different responsibilities and evolving to cover his club's needs.

Let's get the easiest and most obvious number out of the way first: With six games to go in the season, Pogba has scored seven times this year in league play and once in the UEFA Champions League.  That's one fewer than his entire season a year ago and equivalent to his numbers from 2013-14—his first year as a full-time starter.

Reaching this number earlier in the season doesn't necessarily mean his strike rate is up—he's already played in four more games than last year—but given his history, it does establish a trend of consistency, which is a key element to the game of any elite player.

The other basic counting number attributed to most players, assists, tells a bit more of a story.  A year ago, Pogba only had three assists, down from seven the year before.  This year he's recorded a career-high eight—and they've come at a time that Juve really needed them.

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With the departure of Andrea Pirlo and Carlos Tevez, the Bianconeri went into the season in desperate need of someone who could create chances, especially from the midfield.  Pogba has answered that call. According to Squawka.com, he's created 42 chances this season, already an increase over last year's 37. That's second only to Paulo Dybala's 63.

His rise up that list—he was fifth last year behind Tevez, Pirlo, Claudio Marchisio and Roberto Pereyra—came at the best possible time, and it's quite evident he's turned his focus to being more of a creator than he used to be.

Not only has he taken the steps to become more of a facilitator, but he's also become a better one.  His peripheral numbers bear that out.

According to WhoScored.com, Pogba's average key passes per game in the league are exactly the same as last year—1.4.  That indicates the key passes he does make are putting his teammates into better positions to score.

Combined, Pogba's increased production and efficiency shows he's growing as a player and responding to his team's needs.  It's also a sign he's cutting down on one of his biggest weaknesses—the tendency to go for a Hollywood ball when he has better options in front of him.

The numbers certainly suggest Pogba is doing his best to make up for the loss of Pirlo and Tevez, but going forward it's only half the equation for a midfielder.  He has to defend as well, especially in the box-to-box role Pogba occupies.  That was the responsibility of another major star who departed this past summer—Arturo Vidal.

Replacing the kind of production Vidal brought is a difficult thing for any player.  With his unmatched combination of goalscoring, passing and defensive ability, the Chilean is probably the best all-around player in the game.

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He was particularly tenacious in defense.  By WhoScored.com's count (augmented by a little math) he averaged 4.375 tackles per game in his four years with the team.  Even last season, when he played out of position as a trequartista for much of the year, he averaged 3.1 interventions a game.

Pogba is no slouch defensively, but he's never brought a defensive game like that.  He's never been clocked at more than 2.5 tackles per game, and that was in his first year with the team when he was still mostly being used in spot duty.

Still, the Frenchman has raised his defensive game this year.  He's making 2.3 tackles per game, his highest number in two years, and his interceptions-per-game average of 1.3 is his highest since his first season with the team.

His performance defensively may not be verging on the elite like Vidal, who routinely out-tackled centre-backs, but the improvement over last season is another sign Pogba has modified his game in order to fit the voids left behind by so many departures last season.

There are, of course, still some flaws in Pogba's game.  While diminished, his affinity for trying to make a highlight pass as opposed to the best one sometimes returns.  With his renewed aggressiveness on defense has come another, less welcome side effect—bookings.  He's been shown a yellow card nine times by Italian referees this season and another two in the Champions League.

Pogba has never seen that many yellows in a season.  Last year he was only booked four times, and that was a career high.  He's never met the disciplinary threshold of five until this year.  With the Scudetto still in the balance, another booking would leave him on the sidelines for what could be a key run-in fixture.  His reaction to bookings in-game can be a problem too—against Atalanta last month, coach Massimiliano Allegri bemoaned his lack of intensity after receiving a booking.

His greater involvement in creating has also seen some negative side effects.  WhoScored.com lists his unsuccessful touches at 2.7 per game last year.  That's a sharp spike from last year's average of 1.8, which itself had been the highest average of his career up to that point.

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Much of that increase is likely due to Pogba's increased responsibility as a ball-handler.  It could also have been affected by the beginning of the season, when injuries to Claudio Marchisio and Sami Khedira heaped added pressure on Pogba.  He didn't react well.  He was clearly pressing, and it led him to make simple errors while he tried to do too much.

That period is probably the main reason for the huge discrepancy between this season's average and last's season's.  Based on the statistics for both last year and the years before, those kinds of mistakes haven't been in character for him.  Even as he takes on more playmaking responsibilities, that sharp a spike seems more like a statistical anomaly than a trend.

Paul Pogba has taken great strides in his evolution this year.  His team had massive holes to fill after losing the likes of Pirlo, Tevez and Vidal, and the Frenchman was being looked at to to fill the void.  Injuries to important teammates held him back at the beginning of the year, and since then he's elevated his game.  In doing so, he's done the exact things that were needed to fill the voids left by those departures—and the numbers bear that out.