Fantrax Tools you should be using: McLachApp
With Twitter wobbling this week, we highlight some of the ways you can generate your own analysis, in particular looking at a tool developed by @chicagodmitry
As a Fourth of July gift to those in the US (and a Tuesday pick-me-up for everyone else), we thought we’d send another article out this week. This one is a quick hit to share a resource that you can make use of this Summer draft season (particularly valuable when assessing new entrants to the league). So we’re going to use Dominic Szoboszlai to show it off.
Introducing McLachApp
A creation of Twitter user ChicagoDmitry, McLachApp is a free data visualisation tool that pulls data from FBRef and can generate a number of different radars and plots for players and teams. You can use it to get a better understanding of players / teams.
Probably my favourite Fantrax-related use is new transfer scouting over the Summer Draft season. When a new player joins the league, with a few quick clicks of the dashboard, you can get yourself a ‘Player Profile’ radar to look at what type of player they are from an output-perspective in previous seasons.
In this case, we can see the Fantrax potential of Liverpool’s new midfielder Dominic Szoboszlai. There’s a fair bit of progressive passing, there’s some dribbling, a lot of shot assists and there’s good expected assist numbers. You can do some multiplying by your league’s points scoring settings to start to estimate their expected points (14.5 per 90 in standard scoring for Dominic).
Not only that, if we assume that he’s expected to come in and play primarily at RCM, it’s also useful to compare him to options who played in that position last season for Liverpool, such as Harvey Elliott as this lets us see what Liverpool have asked players in that position to do tactically. McLachApp has you covered there too, generating a ‘Player Comparison’ radar that lets you see how they compare.
He profiles out as a more creative on ball, slightly shot-lighter version of Elliott (though we’d may be cautious about this due to playing wider in the Leipzig system than Harvey does at Liverpool). He does generate output at Leipzig from set piece roles, and it’s reasonable to think that might come down at Liverpool but we can see from his ‘Open Play Shots Created’ numbers that he’s no slouch in that regard either, so this is only a minor concern.
And although he is a bit lighter on shots than Elliott, it’s not that he doesn’t shoot. It’s just not the primary aspect of his game (or his Fantrax points profile). The McLachApp ‘Finishing Dashboards’ lets us look deeper at this side of his game too.
You’ll see he’s not regularly breaking into the box to contribute shots like a Bruno Fernandes or similar. But he’s got solid xG numbers for a midfielder and performed about to xG last year. It’s very much a cherry on the top of his statistical profile when looking for Fantrax and you could argue that Liverpool’s historical midfielder usage doesn’t present him huge opportunity to build on this. But either way, he looks promising for Fantrax so far. We’ve fallen for this trap with players moving clubs before though, only to see them perform differently in their new settings. A player radar is only half the story.
Another great feature we can use to understand what we’re getting is to compare Team Profiles. In this case, we can look at RB Leipzig alongside Liverpool. The radars show a pretty solid similarity, which is maybe not surprising given both teams are noted for their high-pressure style and quick attacking.
Leipzig dribble a bit more, but not dramatically, so maybe we should predict fewer on-ball dribbling opportunities for Szoboszlai but overall, things look pretty similar. If he gets the minutes, there’s good reason to think he’ll be a stylistic fit at Liverpool. This doesn’t totally reduce our worry about adaptation, but at least there’s some reason for optimism.
You’ll have to wait for our Transfer Roundup series to get to him for our full breakdown and draft round prediction, but you can get analysing confirmed / potential new signings with McLachApp today and, if you like the tool, reach out to Dmitry on Twitter and thank him for his work!
This is a free post to shine a light on the great work Dmitry has done with McLachApp and directing you to free resources that can help you improve your Fantrax performance. We have no connection with Dmitry other than being big fans of the work. But we’ll continue to post radars from McLachApp on Twitter (as long as it’s running) so you’ll be seeing more of them!