Can without Henderson in the side. I've always had an issue with Can and Henderson (Lucas) playing together and as unfortunate as it is, Henderson's injury has done Can and the side as a whole a world of good.
There was a post on Reddit about this, interesting read:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LiverpoolFC/comments/7r3560/emre_can_with_and_without_henderson/"So, someone mentioned in a comment on a thread about Emre possibly renewing his contract with us that Emre Can is “wildly overrated on this sub”. Well, I didn’t think that was the case and so I started looking at match ratings and something caught my eye about the difference between Emre in midfield with Jordan Henderson starting next to him and without. It was interesting what I found. So here goes:
Bottom Line Up Front: My research shows that this season Emre Can is a consistently better player when he does not play alongside Jordan Henderson in the midfield. Not only that, but the team performs significantly better with only Emre Can as opposed to when they are paired together. I used a combined average player ratings from this sub, WhoScored and an app I use called FotMob.
I used Emre Can’s combined 23 starts this year in the EPL, UCL, FA Cup and UCL playoffs to crunch the numbers. One match omitted was the 5-1 victory of BHA where Emre Can played in a back 3. Just a weird outlier, though Emre Can performed really well, bagging a goal. I used an 8.5 for the sub’s rating of Emre’s performance in the Man City match since the results haven’t been posted yet (figured that was about right since most people recognized that he dominated much of that match).
**This sub scores Emre extremely low on almost every player rating. He received a 4.9 and 5.45 in matches where he had assists on goals that saved a point in both. I found him at the very bottom of the sub’s player ratings many times (win, draw or loss). He averages a rating of 6.21 on this sub as compared to 7.39 from WhoScored and 7.45 from FotMob in the matches I analyzed. I would wager you don’t see that sort of disparity with other regular starters. Anyway, I think we can dispel the “Emre Can is overrated on this sub” myth.
Here are the breakdowns of what I found:
Emre Can and Jordan Henderson started 10 matches in midfield together in all competitions (technically 11, but Hendo was subbed out in the 14’ of Arsenal away, so I counted that as an Emre Can midfield performance without Hendo). In those matches they started together Emre Can averaged a 6.64 player rating with a range of 4.98 (low) - 8.71 (high). There’s that inconsistent player we all groan about. The team scored 20 goals and conceded 20 goals in those matches (yikes!). The team had a record of 4 wins, 4 draws and 2 losses.
Emre Can started 13 matches in all competitions without Jordan Henderson next to him in midfield. In those matches Emre Can averages a 7.18 player rating with a ratings range of 6.5 (low) - 8.23 (high). The team scored 43 goals in those games and conceded 11 goals. The team had a record of 10 wins and 3 draws (no losses) in those matches.
Anyway, this isn’t to rag on Henderson as much as it is to show how different a player Can is when he’s not paired with Hendo and how much better the team is with only Can as opposed to Can and Hendo. I have no idea why - maybe Can just wants to do more of the things that Hendo likes to do. Obviously these numbers could be very misleading as I didn’t dive into who else was playing alongside Can in those matches, but the record and the goal/diff in those matches should tell us that a Can/Hendo midfield is not gonna win us any trophies this year.
If anyone wants a link to my Google Docs table where I crunched the numbers, I can probably work that out."
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