THE IRISH FOOTBALL fan who declares themselves worried about Evan Ferguson’s form sounds like Sisyphus expressing concern about the view from the top of the hill.
Let’s just say there are bigger and more immediate problems in front of us.
Ferguson is out of goalscoring form, for sure, and is currently finding regular game-time tough to come by, despite Brighton’s many injury problems. Having played all 90 minutes against Fulham last weekend, he played only the last 10 minutes of Thursday’s hammering away to Roma.
Having scored six goals in his first 12 league games, Ferguson hasn’t scored in any of his previous 13 Premier League appearances. His last goal came in November’s victory away to Nottingham Forest, whom Brighton face again later today.
Roberto de Zerbi has admitted Ferguson is not currrently at the peak of his powers.
“I think he can play better”, said de Zerbi after the 1-1 draw against Everton a fortnight ago. “I think the team needs Evan but the true Evan, Evan at his 100% of his physical condition and mental condition, confidence.”
The “mental condition” to which de Zerbi refers is likely his confidence, while Ferguson’s physical condition has contributed to his somewhat diminished involvement. He struggled to shake off an illness in recent weeks, and he has had a couple of injury niggles.
John O’Shea, now temporarily Ferguson’s senior international boss, is thoroughly relaxed.
“The big thing with Evan is just to chill out”, says O’Shea. “Brighton have a couple of injuries so there’ll be more focus on him starting games. Every striker has a spell where they go out of form, and stop scoring goals. Next thing they’re after banging in four in four; five in five. That’ll be the case with Evan. With the type of character he is, and the quality he has, he’ll be scoring goals again very soon.”
Ferguson has been pretty unfortunate not to score across these last 13 games, and was inches from getting the final touch to Simon Adingra’s second goal in the 5-0 hammering of Sheffield United in February.
His drop-off in front of goal has also co-incided with a drop-off of his team’s performances. Pace in wide areas is crucial to how Brighton set up – generally, Ferguson drops off to link play with these players and then sprints to the penalty area to convert their crosses – but Karou Mitoma and Solly March have proved to be shattering injury losses. The situation was exacerbated by Adingra’s involvement right to the very end of AFCON.
Brighton are generally scoring fewer goals, anyway. In that 12-game run in which Ferguson scored six goals, Brighton averaged 2.33 goals per game. That has since dropped to 1.61 games, and there have been five games in that stretch in which they haven’t scored at all. For context, Brighton failed to score just four times in the 44 games de Zerbi took charge of prior to that run.
Goals aside, few of Ferguson’s stats have dropped off during this long goalless run. He is averaging roughly three touches fewer per game than he did during the six-goals-in-12 run, but marginally more of those touches have come in the penalty area. He is taking fewer shots, while he is hitting the target less often. Having hit the target with 74% of his shots during his hot streak, that stat has dropped to 43% during the goalless run.
But this is by no means some disastrous drop-off: average those figures out, and Ferguson still leads the Premier League in the number of his shots that hit the target.
For comparison, the league’s three top scorers – Haaland, Watkins, and Salah – are ranked 35th, 22nd, and 34th respectively on that list.
The difference, therefore, is the number of shots these players take. Haaland averages more than four shots per game; Watkins and Salah each take more than three.
Ferguson averages 2.28 shots per 90 minutes, which ranks 50th among Premier League players.
(In this goalless run, he has averaged 1.95 shots per 90 mins, which would put him 77nd on the season’s list, between Enzo Fernandez and Pape Sarr.)
For Ferguson, it’s only a matter of him taking more shots, so if he ups his output, he will quickly end this scoring drought. He can take some responsibility for that, of course, but it’s also partly contingent on the team around him. Haaland and Watkins are the focal points of their teams, whereas Ferguson often plays in a front two, where Joao Pedro is valued an equal goal threat. (Where Ferguson ranks 50th in shots per 90 minutes, Pedro is 22nd. Pedro also gets to take the penalties.)
Though he played a bit-part role against Roma, Ferguson’s performance against Fulham was encouraging, despite – or perhaps because – of the fact he missed a couple of chances notable enough to be shown on Match of the Day.
Ferguson took three shots against Fulham, his highest in a single league game since his hat-trick against Newcastle. The total xG value of these (0.8) was the same value as his four shots in that game against Newcastle, and marked his second-highest value in a single game this season.
These are all encouraging, because the stats show that Ferguson won’t make a habit of missing chances.
Plus, with conversion rates like these, there should be only one line on the job description for the next Ireland manager: find a way of supplying Evan Ferguson with as many shots per game as possible.
All stats courtesy of FBRef
