Birmingham City’s highest rated players of the season so far revealed

Birmingham City have had a rollercoaster ride in their first few months of the 21/22 Championship campaign.

It started oh so promising, took a big downward slide and has since, thankfully, steadied out again.

There has been quite a lot of chop and change in the first team squad too. Some enforced through injuries and others simply through trial and error to try and get results trending in a positive direction once more.

So based on that it may be quite difficult to say who’s been a standout player in the team so far.

However, according to FotMob - a website that produces detailed statistics for football teams around the world, there is one player leading the way for Blues, and by quite a way too.

Marc Roberts.

FotMob has Roberts down as Birmingham’s player of the season so far with an average rating of 7.36/10 and it’s not just guess work or some random fan opinion that gives a score after each game - it’s a rating based on over 100 individual statistics provided by Opta. These include everything from successful passes, duels won/lost, errors leading to shots and so on.

So, basically, Roberts is having a pretty solid year.

There are only three other Blues players that have ratings over seven, too.

Jeremie Bela comes in in second with 7.17, closely followed by Riley McGree with 7.16 and the other is Kristian Pedersen who is currently facing a spell on the sidelines with injury - he has a rating of 7.12.

That formerly named man there, Bela is having a superb season considering he has been utilised out of position for the majority. The 28-year-old has the most key passes per match (2.1) by a distance and has also created the most ‘big’ chances (6) out of any other player so far in the campaign.

The worst performer is currently down as Chuks Aneke with an average return of 6.35. What doesn’t help his cause is the ‘expected goals’ (xG) column.

Aneke has only found the net once this season in the 5-0 hammering of Luton Town but should, if you buy into the ‘xG philosophy’ have 5.5 goals to his name.

A couple of other interesting statistics to note come from two players that haven’t featured in recent weeks.

Tahith Chong, who has returned to Manchester United because of injury, has won possession in the final third more than any other player and also maybe not so surprisingly, has the most successful dribbles on average per match (1.3).

And Ryan Woods, who was a key member of the squad in the early stages of the season but has since found himself on the bench, completes the most accurate passes per match (32.1) and does so nearly doubling that of his nearest teammate, Harlee Dean (19.3).

If you want to check out more of the statistics in detail, you can do so by visiting the FotMob site here.

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