sullydnl
Ross Kemp's caf ID
- Joined
- Sep 13, 2012
- Messages
- 34,063
Fbref.Where are those Kane xA stats from? The site I’m looking at has him at 9.82, 7.58 and 7.47 which looks far more sensible. An xA improvement would be expected by a CF playing in a much more dominant team as well.
Son, by comparison, is 9.51, 7.85 and 5.89, suggesting that (as I indicated) it’s slightly more that Kane produces for him than the other way around.
Though they do also have an xAG stat (as distinct from xA) which is slightly closer to your numbers (7.1, 9.1, 6.9). And in fairness, as I look at the definitions that stat does look more relevant when comparing to assists.
Even with that though, I think the key takeaway is that Kane's 14 assist season was an outlier. You're more realistically looking at an average of approx. 7 or 8 assists from him a season, assuming he maintains the level of the last few seasons.
There's also a question as to how the change in team dynamic would impact that sort of relationship. By which I mean we're simply not going to funnel our attacks through Kane/Rashford to the same degree that Spurs did Kane/Son, as we have other creative outlets like Bruno and Eriksen in the mix that Spurs didn't.
And as I mentioned above, that Kane/Son dynamic was heavily transition dependent, in a side that averaged less possession that we do. We're trying to move away from relying on that sort of counter attacking football, so that Kane/Son attack isn't one to emulate. We don't want to attack like Spurs.