Anyone know much about this CIES Football Observatory stats site? I know it's ridiculed by some, mostly for the values it sets for players, but having come across it for the first time; it does seem the players you expect to score well, score well, and the ones you don't, don't.
From what I can gather the 'Recovery' score is based primarily on interceptions. Saliba obviously scores ludicrously high compared to the other defenders I've picked out here; from what I can see only defensive midfielders get those sorts of numbers. Whilst the approach a team has to defending makes a difference, his centeback partners at Saint Etienne have much worse scores for both 'Recovery' and 'Rigour.' I would like to know what else the score is based on besides interceptions to understand it's value. It seems to me that there is something that underpins this metric that has led Arsenal to move so hard for the kid. I checked just about every centreback I could think of and Saliba's score of 95 in not matched by anyone. The fact that he's 6'4" and 13 stone makes it all the more unusual.
The 'Rigour' stat is based on duels won on the ground and the air. Van Dijk isn't alone in scoring so high: There are a handful of big, strong centrebacks in good back fours that score 99, too. Joel Matip has the same score, for example. I also saw a stat somewhere else that said that Saliba ranked 13th out of the 69 central defenders in Ligue Une for percentage of aerial duels won. And this was particularly impressive because the average age of the 12 players ahead of him was 27.5 years old. It's apparently highly unusual to see a kid that didn't turn 18 until March that high up the list. It surely follows that Saliba's score in the "Rigour" metric is certain to go up as he gets bigger and stronger and moves to a better defence.
The third score the site say they use to gauge the performance level of a centreback is "Distribution" but that is affected by the overall possession the team has and so is redundant when comparing players from different teams. Saliba performs slightly worse than his centreback partner Loic Perrin (56) and slighlty better than Neven Subotic (45) in this metric. Perrin started his career in midfield so you'd expect him to be further ahead really.
The "Team Result" percentage is the overall assessment of what a player's presence does to their team's chance of winning, or more accurately: How they perform relative to their team mates. Saliba's 6% value is as good or better than any other player I could find.
All told, Saliba's 17 Ligue Une games have already marked him out as special relative to his peers. Arsenal must be working on that premise, hence the big money involved and the potential of agreeing to a loan to seal the deal. We really gotta get it done!
