In terms of strikers, anyway...
A little while ago I did an article looking at Bony's stats, and how they compared to other striker's in the Premier League (read it here: link), and after a bit more pondering - plus seeing a bit more of other team's star acquisitions, I'm starting to wonder whether he's proving to be the most effective big-money centre forward signing of the summer. Drawing on a transfers list I found on the official PL website (link), I thought it would be interesting to compare how the £12million recruit from Vitesse stands up when his goal return is put alongside other Premiership strikers acquired this past summer.
I could ramble on about it, or I could just stick a load of stats in a spreadsheet. The latter seemed likely to involve less thinking, so I did just that. All statistics are courtesy of www.whoscored.com.
Two things strike me straight off the bat when looking at those statistics. Firstly, you get what you pay for and secondly, you can spot a team's playing style fairly clearly. Long ball merchants - low pass completion. Short passes to feet, high pass completion. When looking through players for fantasy football (join The Swansea Way league here) I noticed Steven Fletcher had the lowest pass completion of any outfield player to have played a significant amount of games (fifty something percent), but I still think he's class, so whether you can read too much into a striker's pass completion I don't know. It could perhaps be seen as more of a reflection of a team's playing style than anything else, but I do think that if Bony, for example, was underperforming it'd show up more, and that his pass completion would be significantly lower.
I'll keep this short and sweet. It's no secret I'm a massive fan of Wilfried Bony, and it's now starting to look like this season could be more of a case of him bedding in and getting up to speed with the league and the level of fitness expected of a Premier League centre forward. In the meantime, his goal tally more than stands up against any of this summer's big money signings, and he's only recently got a decent run in the team in front of three proper central midfielders.
Whether he'll feature against Norwich is doubtful given his exertions in the Europa League, and with Michu rested it's likely the Spaniard will lead the line. Having two players capable of bagging themselves ten plus goals a season will always, always see you a long way to securing another season's Premier League football, and over the last few weeks I'm sure I've noticed a thawing of previously frosty opinions of the Ivorian on Twitter in particular.
With plenty of games left to play, who knows how many goals our two forwards will bag themselves. How many do you think Bony and Michu will score? Get involved in the comment section below or tweet @TheSwanseaWay!