Thread by @FPL_InHindsight

The curious case of Ivan Toney

So I watched Brentford vs Fulham in GW26 in order to scout how Ivan Toney & Brentford in general look for the captaincy conversation in GW27.

As a Manchester United fan, I don't really watch Brentford a lot and probably had watched them play last just before the World Cup when Brentford turned up at the Etihad and beat City with Toney scoring a brace to win it in the 99th minute.

I have to say I was mightily impressed with Brentford and Toney that day. Brentford had created 6 Big Chances and 5 of them fell to Ivan Toney of which he converted 2.

Switch to the Fulham game in GW26 and Ivan Toney looked like he was playing on the left of the front 3 with Yoane Wissa playing through the middle.

To emphasise how wide and deep Toney played in the game, Wissa and Mbeumo had 4 and 3 touches in the penalty box compared to Toney's 1 which he managed when he took the penalty.

Clearly something wasn't right. Ivan Toney, the man with 15G and 3A this season was so peripheral in a game which Brentford dominated more or less from start to finish. I wondered if Toney's goalscoring data were inflated by penalties and indeed there was some merit to it.

Out of the 15 goals he has scored, 5 were penalties. Penalties are one of the factors we look at while buying players but if you're looking at captaincy you're expecting the striker to have more to his game than just penalties.

The fact that Brentford have 2 away games in 27 and I usually don't like going for a captain from an away team, even less so when they are from a non top 6 side, even lesser so if they are relying on penalties for one-third of their goals.

Having watched Brighton turn on the style vs West Ham the case for a Brighton player for captaincy became stronger in my head. However, I just wanted to hit the final nail on the head by checking Toney's stats away from home and labelling him as a home game player.

Prima facie evidence suggested that wasn't the case. 8 goals(G) and 2 assists(A) at home in 12 apps vs 7G and 1A in 10 appearances meant he was equally good away from home as he was at home.

But what about penalities? We can't predict them and if he was heavily relying on his penalties for away goals then surely there's a case to avoid him for captaincy. This is where the plot twisted.

Of his 7 away goals, Toney had just 1 penalty which he had scored, which meant 6 of his away goals were non-penalties but even more importantly 4 of his 8 goals at home were actually penalties.

What does that mean? Is Toney more prolific away from home than at home if penalties are taken out of equation? Surely that can't be right, can it?

Well it can and it is. Ivan Toney has much better non-penalty stats away from home than at home. Let's look at some of them:

Field: Home stats vs Away stats
Non Pen xGI per 90: 0.43 vs 0.68
Non Pen xG per 90: 0.33 vs 0.55
xA per 90: 0.10 vs 0.13

However I don't solely rely on expected data since they can be misleading sometimes. Is there more data to corroborate the theory that Toney is a better asset away from home than at home? Well sure enough there is.

Field: Home stats vs Away stats
Shots per 90: 2.94 vs 3.11
Shots in the box per 90: 2.02 vs 2.61
Big chances per 90: 1.01 (includes 4 pens) vs 1.40 (includes 1 pen)
Penalty area touches per 90: 5.0 vs 5.5 (again home games have 4 penalty goal touches to 1 away)

So Toney has a better goal threat away but a better assist threat at home? Mmmm I guess not.

Field: Home stats vs Away stats
Chances created per 90: 0.67 vs 1.10
Big chances created per 90: 0.34 vs 0.50

What is the conclusion out of all of this?
Is Toney a better captaincy option than the Brighton mids? Should I captain Toney now because he's playing away from home where he has better stats?

Unfortunately or fortunately I don't have the right answer to your question.
As the "Prince of Paradox" G.K. Chesterton once said
"All roads lead to Rome, which is one reason why many people never get there"

All data used in this thread and extracted from the @FFScout of which I am a happy & proud member for a few years now.

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