Season 2011-12 Fan Articles

Maurane Fellaini ? an objective viewpoint

By Colin   O'Keeffe  ::  17/11/2011   34 Comments (»Last) I?ve just heard the news that Maurane Fellaini has signed a five-year deal. In the BBC website article, Robert Elstone states that ?Maurane has been a hugely influential player since his arrival.?

I don?t get to enough games to make a judgement from my own experience of seeing him play. However, I?ve been keeping up to date with something called the Castro Edge Rankings. The Castrol Edge Rankings is a rolling 12-month ranking of footballers from across Europe's top 5 leagues and is based on real performances and 100% accurate objective data.

Performance analysts analyse each player's performance in every Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and Champions League match. They award each player a Castrol Index score for every match based on their every touch of the ball on the pitch and assess whether it has a positive or negative impact on a team?s ability to score or concede a goal.

So I decided to look at how Fellaini is rated on this and compare this to how other Everton players are rated. Interestingly, this is how they are all ranked.

EFC Castrol-Edge rankings
Ranking (All players in top 5 Euro leagues)	Ranking last month	Player	Ranking points
174	93	P. Jagielka	652
223	186	L. Osman	635
223	174	S. Coleman	635
232	157	L. Baines	632
343	174	S. Distin	600
444	83	T. Cahill	579
444	381	P. Neville	579
585	972	L. Saha	553
596	895	J. Rodwell	551
748	957	T. Hibbert	518
763	720	T.Howard	514
817	948	M.Fellaini	497
985	827	J. Heitinga	436
1234	1198	R. Drenthe	299
1454	1338	D. Bilyaletdinov	208
1609	1481	V. Anichebe	155
1979	1885	M. Gueye	47
1992	1490	M. Hahnemann	44
1999	1965	R. Barkley	42
2035	2041	A. Vellios	35

This suggests that Fellaini is currently well down the list of most valuable Everton players ? coming in below Osman, Coleman, Cahill, Neville and Rodwell amongst our midfielders! People might suggest that the stats must be bollocks ? but I found it interesting that players who are perceived to have being doing well this season (i.e Rodwell, Hibbert) have been climbing these rankings steadily this season. Players perceived to be struggling (ie just about everyone else) have been dropping in the rankings ? most markedly for Tim Cahill.

By the way, the top Castrol ranked players in Europe are Messi, Gomez, Benezema, Van Persie and Ronaldo ? not much to argue with there!

My perception of Fellaini is that he is a decent player ? but someone who doesn?t impact enough where it really matters (ie, in the final third of either half). I just wonder if the club will be getting genuine value for money from this contract I imagine won?t be cheap...

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