Analysing Zlatan Ibrahimovic's Form for PSG so Far This Season

Throughout his career, Zlatan Ibrahimovic has always faced some form of criticism. Many proclaim him to be one of the best players of his generation, some think his failure to win the Champions League lets down his legacy. However, most would agree that his talent is special—Zlatan certainly would—and for Paris Saint-Germain, he is without doubt their talisman and leader.

Results this season have not gone exactly to plan for PSG. They have had to play their last four games without their Swedish forward, and with six draws in nine games, there is an instant connection made that PSG are far from their best when they have to play without their main man.

When analysing the form of Ibrahimovic this season statistically, it looks—bar the injury—to have been a positive start, but digging a little deeper, there are a few doubts that the 33-year-old has found anything close to his best form in the first quarter of the Ligue 1 campaign.

Injury has meant Ibrahimovic has only featured in five of PSG’s nine league games this season; he also missed the 3-2 victory over Barcelona in the Champions League. In the league, he has only played the full 90 minutes three times and 359 minutes overall.

It all started with a bang. It was Zlatan who saved PSG on the opening day of the season. After giving the side an early 1-0 lead at Stade de Reims, the hosts bounced back and were 2-1 ahead until Ibrahimovic took it upon himself to win PSG a point just after the hour mark. His second goal may have taken a deflection off goalkeeper Johnny Placide, but it was the Swede’s influence that forced the goal and stopped PSG from starting the season with a defeat.

Michel Euler/Associated Press

PSG's first home game of the season will always be remembered for Brandao’s headbutt on Thiago Motta after a 2-0 home win against Bastia, but Ibrahimovic was forced off with an injury after just 16 minutes of the victory.

He missed the next match, a goalless draw against Evian in which PSG certainly missed him. They lacked his leadership up top and never really tested Evian throughout the entire game.

On his return against Saint-Etienne, Ibrahimovic declared that he was far from 100 percent fit before going on to score a hat-trick. The goals grabbed the headlines, and there were plenty of reports getting carried away by the score and Zlatan’s goals, but in truth, Les Verts didn’t turn up—the early mistake by goalkeeper Stephane Ruffier stunned the away side and they failed to recover.

Not long after that game, Ibrahimovic scored twice for Sweden in the win against Estonia, becoming the country’s all-time leading goalscorer in the process. Interestingly, he has failed to score a single goal since.

For PSG, the games against Rennes, Ajax and Lyon, showed the other side of Ibrahimovic. He did strike the crossbar away at Rennes, but he was quiet throughout most of the game. At Ajax, PSG failed to show a killer instinct, and the home game against Lyon was one of his worse performances for a long time.

Peter Dejong/Associated Press

French newspaper L’Equipe awarded the Swede a score of three out of 10 for his display. The publication is known for being tough with ratings, but a three for Zlatan is not something that happens very often, though it was a fair reflection.

According to WhoScored.com, no one who started the game touched the ball less than Ibrahimovic. He only managed one shot on target and only attempted 29 passes at a success rate of 72.4 percent. More importantly, his work rate was non-existent, and he failed to influence the match in any of the ways you would expect.

The best compliment you can pay to a player is to say a team struggles when they are without him. In the four games PSG have played without Ibrahimovic, they have won two and drawn the others. The victory over Barcelona was by far the club's best performance of the season, and it is doubtful PSG would have been able to line up as they did in that game if Ibrahimovic was in the team.

Playing with Javier Pastore, Lucas Moura and Edinson Cavani gave PSG a mobility and pace up front that just isn’t possible with Ibrahimovic’s style. All three worked extremely hard, tracking back when needed and bursting forward at speed.

When Ibrahimovic plays, he now likes to drop deep, collect the ball far from the goal and start most of PSG’s attacking moves. This is not to say it isn’t effective, two league titles says otherwise, but it can be a more slow and methodical approach. What has impressed when watching PSG in recent weeks is the speed of their counter-attacks.

"

50% - PSG have only won 50% of their competitive games without Zlatan Ibrahimovic since 2012/13, 70% with him. Injured.

— OptaJean (@OptaJean) September 23, 2014"

Since his arrival, PSG have only won 50 per cent of the games played with Ibrahimovic in the team and 70 per cent when he is in the team. These stats are easy to digest, but it does hide the important factors involved.

Opta released that stat before the 1-1 draw against Monaco. At that stage, Ibrahimovic had played 72 out of a possible 84 league games since joining at the start of the 2012/13 season, meaning they had only failed to win six out of their 12 games without their talisman.

Winning 70 per cent of games with him in the team means they had won 50 games and failed to win 22 games with Ibrahimovic in the team. Ibrahimovic has played a high number of games, so there is a larger sample size to make up the statistics. With the players PSG have available to them, there is little doubt they would win 70 per cent of the time if they had to play 72 games without the striker.

Ibrahimovic will always be important to how PSG play, but his form this season has shown that they are far from a one-man team—it just doesn’t come across when you still have Zlatan in the squad. A handful of games without him means they have to adapt on a game-by-game basis.

Once the Swede hangs up his boots is when we will see how important he is to this current PSG team.