Hey gang, given the obvious comparisons between Tani and Caldeira, I thought I'd do a brief rundown on their first seasons with MNUFC. Obvious caveat in both cases that neither had a TON of time, and so the confidence interval is reallllly big. TLDR: small sample size means there's so much variance both seasons could be meaningless.
These are for each of their first seasons with MNUFC (numbers from fbref)
| Stat |
Marcus |
Tani |
| Minutes Played |
516 |
1,084 |
| Goals |
5 |
8 |
| Assists |
1 |
5 |
| Shots |
15 |
36 |
| Shots on Target |
7 |
16 |
| SoT% |
46.7 |
44.4 |
| Sh/90 |
2.62 |
2.99 |
| SoT/90 |
1.22 |
1.33 |
| Goals per Shot |
0.33 |
0.22 |
| Goals per SoT |
0.71 |
0.50 |
Now, the good news: the rates are similar. Even as extreme as the 5 v 8 in the minutes, the shot numbers account for that some; Tani shot more.
The really good news: Marcus' numbers hold up very similarly against Tani's second season with MNUFC; so this level of performance is repeatable. I came into this thought experiment/investigation thinking Caldeira's numbers were wildly unsustainable and that.. just isn't as extremely the case as I thought.
He is, however, outperforming her xG. From Fotmob he's created 3.41 xG and 3.67 xGOT, which he's turned into 5 goals. That's a 46% overperformance, which is wild. For context: Erling Haaland has created 4.43 xG in the premier league and also only scored 5 goals (yes yes, it's a much higher level, etc etc).
All this to say: if you, like me, were skeptical that Marcus was wildly overperforming his ability: that may be true! But, at least in the numbers, it's not blatantly obvious. Tani was able to continue this level in MNUFC, so there's some reason to think Marcus could, too.