A Statistical Look at Thomas Partey
Arsenal recently announced the signing of Thomas Partey from Atletico Madrid after activating his release clause of €50m. For many Arsenal fans, the 6 foot Ghanaian international represents a strong and dominant figure in the middle of the park, something Arsenal has desperately lacked since Patrick Vieira’s exit from the club in 2005.
Admittedly, I have not watched Partey play much with the exception of a handful of games in the Champions League. To understand the kind of player Partey is, I decided to take a look at his statistics from the 2019–2020 season. I focused on his defensive actions and his ability in possession as Arsenal are looking to add a defensive midfielder who will strengthen their spine and be comfortable with the ball at his feet.
To gain a better understanding of Partey’s defensive ability I took a look at his tackling and interception statistics as well as the zones of the field in which he made the most tackles. I also tried to understand how he deals with players dribbling towards him in one on one situations and his ability when applying pressure on an opponent on the ball.
My dataset includes all the midfielders in La Liga and the English Premier League who have played a minimum of 18 full 90 minute games. Most of the statistics I look at have been normalized to reflect what they would look like over 90 minutes to remove any kind of bias.
From these distribution plots, it is clear that Partey’s statistics rank him in the 50th — 80th percentile of midfielders for defensive actions. He seems to operate heavily in the defensive third and is very efficient at putting on successful pressures on his opponent. His tackling and interception numbers are a little underwhelming. He is a little over the 75th percentile but I would have expected more for the €50m Arsenal are paying for him. His box plots confirm that for most of his defensive actions he ranks around the 50th — 80th percentile.
I picked two of Partey’s stronger defensive statistics in Tackles and Interceptions per 90 minutes and Successful Pressure Percentage Per 90 minutes and his numbers do not make him out to be as good in those categories as some of the best players in his position like Ndidi, Kante, Fabinho and Casemiro, who immediately stand out. You would like to see more of him in terms of tackles and interceptions.
I continued my analysis by looking at Partey’s passing ability. I took a look at Partey’s pass completion percentage, progressive passes, passes into the final third, key passes, passes into the penalty area and passes made under pressure from the opponent.
Partey seems to primarily rank in the 50th — 80th percentile of midfielders in the Premier League and La Liga in terms of passing statistics. A look at the box plot will confirm this statistic. However, Partey does seem very proficient at at completing passes into the final third.
Given that Partey will primarily find himself playing as a ‘6’ or a defensive midfielder, key passes or passes into the penalty area are probably not as important as completion percentage and successful passes under pressure. As the anchor of Arsenal’s midfield Partey will find himself pressed by opposing players on a regular basis. We can see how he compares to other midfielders in La Liga and the Premier League in terms of these statistics.
I also took a look at some other statistics that are important to Partey’s position which I wasn’t able to cover earlier. I took a look at his interceptions, tackles won, ball recoveries, successful ball carries, progressive distance moved towards the opponents goal and fouls committed.
Once again Partey mostly ranks in the 50th — 80th percentile in terms of miscellaneous statistics. The box plot confirms this observation. However his ability to recover loose balls is a standout and will serve him well in the Premier League where fighting for the second ball is crucial. His ability as a ball carrier is also great for someone in his position.
The scatter plot below once again shows that while Partey is a good player, he is not up there with the elite players in his position. All the plots so far show that statistically he is a good player but I do not believe that he is the elite defensive midfielder Arsenal fans think he will be.
In the past Atletico has sold several top players including Griezmann, Rodri, Lucas Hernandez, Diego Godin and Filipe Luis. I believe that Diego Simeone’s dogmatic approach and risk averse approach masks a lot of his defensive players’ frailties. Rodri has not been able to suitably replace Fernandinho, Diego Godin left Inter after a year, Lucas Hernandez finds himself displaced by Alphonso Davies at Bayern and Filipe Luis had a tough time at Chelsea before returning to Atletico.
At the age of 27, I do not think there is much room for improvement for Partey and while I think he will be a good, serviceable player, I don’t think he will be able to reach the levels of the top defensive midfielders in the Premier League like Fabinho, Kante and Fernandinho.
