Is Ramsey’s Goalscoring Form Sustainable?

Aaron Ramsey has enjoyed a supreme start to the season, with 11 goals in 17 appearances he is one of the main reasons why Arsenal are five points clear in the Premier League.

To put his accomplishments into context, he has doubled his goals tally for Arsenal, scoring as many in his last 17 games as he did in his previous 150.

When a player hits such a purple patch from a betting perspective should we jump on the bandwagon or wait for a return to the mean?

To help understand Aaron Ramsey’s exploits we have examined his shot data to see if there is an underlying reason to his improvement, other than just confidence.

Midfielders avg approx 2 shots per game (min 8 games)

The table above groups together midfielders who average approximately two shots per game and we have broken down their shots into those taken inside the box and those outside.

Having collated three years worth of Premier League data we have developed a goals expectation from shots taken inside or outside the penalty box. Intuitively those taken inside the box have a higher percentage chance of turning into goals.

Although 10 games is a small sample size, we can see Aaron Ramsey is out performing the norm. His 19 shots (53% in the box) would normally yield 1.9 goals; his actual total is 2.69 times more than you would expect.

This is an over-performance but not unheard of; Yaya Toure is similarly punching above his weight from a shots perspective.

Through the course of a season we would expect Ramsey’s actual/expected tally to return towards 1. On the other side, Kevin Mirallas should have scored more goals given his shots profile and should eventually return to the mean.

If you prefer to view football matches as independent events then Aaron Ramsey, Yaya Toure and Kevin Mirallas should have similar anytime goalscorer prices when facing comparable opposition because their total goal expectations are all very close.