FanPost

The Best Season By A Forward Of The Last 5 Years? Didier Drogba


I have been collected information on forwards and all aspects of their performance for as far back as I can, which happens to be the 2008-09 season. The data gets a little weird after that point!. The reason I have collected this data is so we can get a baseline on performance, discover some trends in terms of age and decline in performance, and do cool things like find out which forward had the best season of the last 5 years.

The criteria was simple: A player must have played in over 60% of the available minutes and players were sorted by their Goals per 90 tally (penalties stripped out).

There is a top 10 list here.

The eventual winner won by a distance too. His name was:

1 - Didier Drogba (2009/10)

Team Age Player Goals p90 Assists p90 Shots p90 SoT p90 ▾ ToP% Scoring% Shot Acc%
Chelsea 31 Drogba 0.91 0.32 5.75 2.14 77.55 42.42 37.29

Didier is our champ. That Drogba performed this well at age 31 is a incredible. Strikers tend to be well in decline by this age but Drogba rolled back the years and this outstanding league performance enabled Chelsea to pip Man United on the last day of the season.

0.91 goals per 90 is by far the best on record. Drogba's assist numbers are off the chart too. Shots on target per 90 and Scoring% are super elite. Right across the board Drogba just kills it. This was a truly special Premier league forward who in 2009/10 recorded the best individual performance of the last 5 seasons.

Drogba was truly a rare player in that his peak years came much later than is normal for forwards. A warhorse, a beast, a bully. Drogba was all these things, but my he could play.

There are plenty of other interesting names in the Top 10: Suarez at #5, Bale at #9. The rest of the article is here (link)

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