Breaking Down Mario Balotelli's Stats for Liverpool This Season
Mario Balotelli is one of the most controversial figures in the Premier League, but how does the 24-year-old Italian striker fare statistically this season?
Having joined Liverpool from AC Milan in a £16 million deal last summer, Balotelli has never been far from the headlines.
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One such instance came recently, with former Reds defender Mark Lawrenson describing him, via BBC Radio Five Live (h/t James Orr of The Independent), as "an absolute waste of time."
"Forget about Mario Balotelli. ... He shouldn't be anywhere near this team," Lawrenson continued. Whether the 57-year-old's criticism is just is another matter entirely.
Here we break down Balotelli's statistics for Liverpool this season, looking at three main areas of the striker's game and comparing them with the outputs of his team-mates and Premier League counterparts.
Defensive Work
Reds manager Brendan Rodgers outlined his view of Balotelli after the Reds' 1-0 first-leg Europa League victory over Besiktas, as reported by James Pearce of the Liverpool Echo:
"We need to ensure that whatever level of the game we are playing at we have everyone working as a team and once we get the penalty he stops working.
He needs to improve on that facet of his game to play in his position, rather than standing on the side of the football field.
He has contributed by scoring the goal but that is what he is paid to do. He needs to keep that efficiency in his game and show that he can affect the team whether he is asked to play from the bench or from the start.
"
Historically under Rodgers, Liverpool are a side that defend from the front, with a high-intensity game both on and off the ball required—this is one reason why Raheem Sterling has impressed when in a centre-forward's role.
Quantifying a successful pressing movement is almost impossible, but comparing Balotelli to his Anfield contemporaries with rudimentary defensive statistics shows a different picture of the striker.
Balotelli has made an average of 0.9 tackles per game in the Premier League, more than Rickie Lambert (0.2), Fabio Borini (0.2) and Daniel Sturridge combined (0.1); of any striker used by Rodgers this season, only Sterling (1.1) has averaged more.
Balotelli's average of 0.2 interceptions per game, while relatively low, is higher than those of both Lambert and Sturridge, who have made no successful interceptions.
Balotelli is also the least dribbled-past player in the Liverpool squad this season (0.1 times on average per game), although his advanced position clearly aids this.
On a wider scale, Balotelli's combined average of 1.1 tackles and interceptions per game is higher than those of many of his Premier League counterparts. Three prime examples are Samuel Eto'o (0.6) Loic Remy (0.4) and Wilfried Bony (0.3)—who were all pursued by Rodgers before Balotelli's signing, according to Pearce.
When criticising Balotelli's defensive work, Rodgers seemingly ignores the paltry contributions of his other strikers.
Selfishness
Stemming from this work-rate misconception, Balotelli is widely renowned as a selfish player—the archetypal self-centred centre-forward.
Former Milan team-mate Adel Taarabt epitomised this in December last year, via Chris Waugh of MailOnline: "I played with him and I can confirm he’s good, but he didn’t seem like a world-class player to me. ... He doesn’t play for the team."
It may sound rich coming from Taarabt, but is he correct? The most succinct way to explore this status is in Balotelli's passing statistics.
Balotelli averages just 15.94 successful passes per 90 minutes in the Premier League, less than any other Liverpool outfield player.
His average passing accuracy of 70 percent is the third worst of any Liverpool outfield player, behind only Lambert (69 percent) and Jose Enrique (65 percent).
Furthermore, Balotelli averages 0.69 key passes per 90 minutes, less than any other Liverpool forward. In fact, Balotelli's average is less than half those of fellow attackers Adam Lallana (1.37), Philippe Coutinho (1.52) and Sterling (2.05).
Perhaps most crucially, Balotelli has made no assists so far this season.
Naturally, this doesn't provide a complete verdict on Balotelli's efforts as a team player—with his off-ball movement and defensive application indirectly resulting in goals for his team-mates this season—but when on the ball, the 24-year-old has shown some clear selfish tendencies.
Profligacy
Another area that Balotelli will need to work on is his on-goal profligacy, which is a notorious pitfall to his all-around game.
In 13 Premier League appearances so far this season, Balotelli has scored just one goal; in all competitions, he has scored three goals in 18 games.
This is despite the striker averaging 3.7 shots per game in the league, more than any other Liverpool player.
In the Premier League, only Sergio Aguero (4.2) and Charlie Austin (4.2) have averaged more shots per game, but Aguero has scored 17 goals and Austin has managed 15.
In Balotelli's case, there seems to be a lot of effort—with very little end product.
Furthermore, ahead of Balotelli's move to Liverpool, a video of the striker's sensational long-range goal for Milan in a 1-0 victory over Bologna was circulated to a rapturous reception:
The nonchalance, the accuracy and the full-blooded audacity of the attempt were enough to pique the interest of even the most sceptical of supporters—however, Balotelli's failure to replicate this in a Liverpool shirt is weighing him down.
This season, no Premier League striker has attempted more shots from outside the area per 90 minutes than Balotelli, who averages 2.89 attempts.
Interestingly, Sturridge has attempted the third-most long-range shots per 90 minutes, with an average of 1.88.
Neither has managed to score from outside the area so far this season in the Premier League.
However Rodgers stresses it, Balotelli's lowly goal record since his move to Liverpool last summer should be the primary concern, but the striker's improvement of late and his growing work rate suggest he could remain a feature at Anfield in the future.
Based on statistics, Mario Balotelli has a lot of work to do, but the striker doesn't seem to be a lost cause when compared to his contemporaries and can be a useful player for Brendan Rodgers at Liverpool.
Statistics via WhoScored.com and Squawka.com.
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