Is Igor Jesus The Most Isolated Striker in The Premier League?
I've created a new metric to find out which Premier League strikers are most isolated - but where does Igor Jesus rank, and what does this tell us about Dyche?
Forest’s playing style of late has been debated by plenty - it’s very direct and on the eye test at least it always seems as though Forest’s striker (mainly Igor Jesus) is incredibly isolated. To dig into this further, I’ve created a new metric!
The Method
Ideally, to measure how isolated a striker is you’d want to use tracking data so we can see at all times how far away they are from their team mates. Unfortunately, this data isn’t publicly available - so instead we have to make do with event data, where only on-ball actions are measured.
Firstly, we can look pass reception locations by players. In this case, I’ve looked at the average reception location of players from all positions, taken an average of all those from a team that are not the striker, and compared that with the striker’s own pass reception locations. To make this more relevant to what I want to understand, we only take into account passes that are received in the attacking half, whilst also not including passes received in the box. I’ve named this single metric Reception Separation.
After that, we can also look in to the length of passes a striker is receiving. To me, if a player is consistently receiving long passes, then the chances of them being more isolated from their team mates is higher. Therefore we create two metrics here, the first Average Pass Reception Length, which is pretty self explanatory.
The second metric related to pass length, is working out share of passes received by a striker that are greater than 25 yards in length. This one I’ve named % Receptions Greater Than 25 Yards.
We can then combine all 3 of these metrics together to create an Overall Isolation Score. This is using Z-Scores, which will give us a good idea of which strikers are most isolated, and those that tend to have lots of players around them.
In this case, a high positive number suggests a player is very isolated, a low negative number suggests a player has lots of close support. A number close to 0, suggests these strikers fit right in the middle compared to the league averages.
Premier League - Striker Isolation
First up then, let’s look at the Reception Separation of Premier League strikers. The definition of this would be to say this metric tells us the average spatial separation between a striker’s pass receptions, and his team’s attacking structure. More simply, how far away is the striker receiving the ball from the rest of his team mates?
Numbers for the 33 eligible Premier League strikers with more than 50 pass receptions that meet the criteria, range from 22.16 yards (Alexander Isak) to 16.06 yards (Jean-Phillipe Mateta). Here, Forest’s two main strikers are quite far apart in ranking, but not so much in distance. Igor Jesus’ figure is 20.13 yards, and Chris Wood’s is 18.30 yards.
Next we’ll look at the Average Pass Reception Length - what you’d expect to see here is strikers from the most direct teams at the top of this chart, as they’re most likely to be on the end of long passes.
And that is clearly the case here, with Beto having an Average Pass Reception Length of 31.32 yards, his team mate Thierno Barry’s figure is 24.92 yards. From a Forest perspective, Igor Jesus ranks 5th (26.34 yards), and Chris Wood ranks 7th (25.63 yards). It’s important to note here that most of both players’ game time has come under different managers - so although it feels like Igor Jesus is much more isolated under Dyche than Chris Wood ever was, perhaps that’s not the case? Let’s continue!
In the last of these 3 metrics, we’ll now look at the % of Receptions Greater Than 25 yards. You’d expect this to have a similar ranking to the previous chart, as these metrics should be pretty closely linked.
And once again as expected that’s exactly what happens. This tells us that almost 46% of the passes that Igor Jesus receives are longer than 25 yards - this ranks 5th in the Premier League. Chris Wood (just over 40%) has a slightly lower figure, and ranks 8th.
The Final Ranking
Let’s put all of these together then and work out the Overall Isolation Score by combining all 3 of these individual metrics together and assigning a little bit of weighting to give us the final outcome.
It will come as absolutely no surprise to watchers of Forest that Igor Jesus ranks as the 2nd most isolated striker in the Premier League this season. He’s slightly less isolated than Everton’s Beto. More interestingly though, his numbers show he is way more isolated than Chris Wood, who ranks 14th of 33.
Remember when I said that Igor Jesus & Wood have had their game time essentially come under different managers? This to me shows there’s been a real hesitancy and/or difficulty to get midfielders & wingers close to Igor Jesus. This wasn’t much of a problem with Chris Wood on the pitch.
Now this can both be down to a manager’s style (Nuno & Ange would consistently get players closer to the striker, whereas Dyche is seemingly more direct), but also down to the individual player. Igor Jesus makes lots of channel runs that Wood can’t/won’t make.
Why is this such an issue & difficulty for Forest?
I don’t believe Forest recruited Igor Jesus with the idea that he’d be leading the line so often and thrown in at the deep end. But Wood’s injury and Awoniyi’s lack of form has given the club no other choice. Therefore Igor Jesus has had to try and adapt on the job, an incredibly difficult task for a player at his first European club - then you add in that he’s onto his third manager of the season, and third playing style, then you can see why there’s problems.
In his final 6 months with Botafogo, when looking at just the Reception Separation, Igor Jesus was 3rd closest to the rest of his team’s attacking structure in the Brazilian top flight out of 52 eligible players. Essentially, he is not at all used to having none of his team mates around him, so not does he not have team mates close to him in this Forest side, he’s not used to that situation either.
Luckily for Forest (and understandable when you watch him play), he does have plenty of experience in dealing with long & direct passes coming his way. The big difference is purely the proximity of his team mates. For that reason, in the Overall Isolation Score, Igor Jesus ranked right in the middle of all strikers in Brazil, with a score only slightly over 0.
It’s no shock then to see that Igor Jesus is engaging in more aerial duels with Forest than he did with Botafogo. A positive here is that he’s actually winning a higher percentage of his offensive aerial duels (up from 42.31% to 45.10%). Considering the jump up in quality and also physicality, that’s a decent outcome.
Where this is a problem, is that more than half the time that Forest pump the ball up to Igor Jesus, they’re giving up the first-contact to their opponent. This can be remedied by getting players closer to Igor Jesus and trying to win those second balls, but as we’ve seen with our eyes and also in the data, that just isn’t happening enough.
What makes this even more difficult for Igor Jesus is his height, or rather lack of it. Out of all 32 eligible Premier League strikers, according to (sometimes unreliable) height data, he’s the joint smallest. Forest are asking one of the smallest strikers to engage in the 5th most offensive aerial duels. I feel like Jesus is actually doing a pretty good job in fairness, what’s obviously lacking is that final goal tally in the Premier League.
Whilst I doubt he’ll ever get anywhere close to Chris Wood’s scoring ability, the fact that he’s been able to score consistently in cup competitions suggests that there is some improvement to be had in the Premier League. Forest will have to hope that will come if and when they get some reinforcement up front to give him some support.
Historical View - Is This What Dyche Does?
Finally, I thought I’d look back at this metric since Forest have been back in the Premier League. Interestingly, the most isolated striker in the Premier League since the 2022/23 season is Forest’s very own Taiwo Awoniyi in his debut season with the club. Perhaps this explains why Dyche has been ready to bring him back into the fold?
For added context, there are 195 eligible data points here, we can see that Dominic Calvert-Lewin is a regular at the top of this chart both for his time at Everton and now with Leeds.
Dyche has managed Everton for parts or all of the 3 seasons prior to this one. Eligible forwards under his management have been
Dominic Calvert Lewin x3 (ranked 2nd, 3rd & 9th)
Beto x 2 (ranked 24th & 28th)
Armando Broja (ranked 29th)
Demarai Gray (ranked 78th)
Neal Maupay (ranked 156th)
So it’s clear that forwards under Dyche are pretty much always isolated - if Forest are to recruit on at least a short-term basis this summer, then it’s important they go for a player who can fit into this style of play and be capable of playing without team mates close to them.
This is one of the reasons why I feel its unlikely Forest are actually going to make a move for someone like Mehdi Taremi, and it also explains why Dyche has been fine with the departure of Arnaud Kalimuendo.