Earlier today, Real Madrid announced that Arda Güler is the team’s player of the month for September. That adds up — he has probably been the team’s best player this season and the only reason why he is not the league’s best performer full stop is because Raphina ingested some vibranium into his veins and has looked unstoppable.
Nevertheless, beyond Real Madrid, Güler has not just been the team’s best creator — he’s also been the world’s best creator.
And that’s not an exaggeration. Güler has been
slinging key passes out of his eye balls. One look up, the chance is already created. Over and over again, the Turk has prolifically created chances out of thin air, and if not for poor finishing from his teammates, he’d lead the league in assists.
Güler has created an xGA of 3.01, per Statmuse, with only two assists to his name. Lamine Yamal, meanwhile, has four assists from an xGA of 2.71. Freak finishing vs poor finishing is often the deciding factor when it comes to assist numbers.
Güler has created 28 chances in La Liga, the most of any player in the league — four more than Lamine Yamal and 12 more than the next tier of creators: Unai López, Edu Expósito and Iñigo Vicente. To put it into perspective how prolific he is at creating chances, he creates a chance every 12.5 minutes, and a big chance every 43.6 minutes.
Güler’s 28 chances created are also the most in Europe. When you look at total numbers, Lamine Yamal comes close, but if you look at the numbers per 90 (which is apt given that Güler hasn’t started every game), he doubles Lamine Yamal’s numbers (3.73 chances created vs 7.28 — a surreal number).
To put those numbers into perspective, despite playing the least amount of minutes out of the top creators in Europe, he still has the highest volume of chances created.
‘Hidden’ in those key pass numbers are some set pieces, but you should be fine with that. If it was easy racking up key passes by merely being the team’s primary free-kick taker, then everyone would lead the charts. But they don’t, and poking fun at it doesn’t make sense, and it’s something lazy analysts used to do to drag Toni Kroos as well.
It will be interesting to see where the data lies over the entire season. Güler is currently on pace to dwarf his already impressive numbers from last season. Off the bench against Rayo Vallecano, he had an unfathomable five chances created in 18 minutes alone.
One thing is for sure, Real Madrid don’t have any issues generating chances if Arda Güler is on the pitch. And with that simple truth, he objectively should not be on the bench, at all.
