"The only thing constant in life is change."

The inevitable future that Bayern fans look upon with dread is on the horizon. In the next few seasons, the next generation will be slowly phasing out some of our old guards. And it's something we have all been preparing, discussing, worrying, and maybe keeping us awake. The future is not so distant anymore and are we prepared for it?

Bayern's central midfield is stacked with talent and promising players. Even without Alonso, Schweinsteiger, and Lahm there are still 4-5 players for the position. Lahm as right back will always be hard to replace (both for club anad country) but this Bayern under Guardiola doesn't utilize a right back properly.

But Robben and Ribéry aka Robbéry are showing no signs of slowing down and hanging up their boots. Ribéry in 2013 won everything but the Ballon d'Or. Robben, in his current form, might be the 3rd Bayern player in a row to place third in the Ballon d'Or award.

Let's get drunk on Robbéry wine.

Both are 31 and both are aging like wine. In every goal they scored, every cut inside, every magical pass, every overlap, every take-on, Bayern without this dynamic duo is getting more unimaginable. Robben in 2012-2013 was as good as gone until Kroos' injury. Ribéry, with his absences due to injuries were something were slowly adjusting to until we see him back in action and the Frenchman shows us he still got it. Robben's supposed heir, Shaqiri, has left Bayern for Inter.

Robben is having the best and most productive season of his career. Coming off a memorable (and controversial) WC performance, the Flying One-legged Dutchman has continued his form from Brazil to Germany and is currently leading the league's top scorer list.

Missing France's WC run and some months early this season, Ribéry might not be as prolific as his partner but has tallied 8 goals and 9 assists for this season. He is third in assists behind Müller and Robben.

Wear your nerd glasses for Stat Attack!

Because I am interested in football analytics and a firm believer of it's use in football for the professionals and fans alike, I'm going to use statistics to find an answer. I couldn't put more emphasis: Not the answer but an answer. Scouting takes time, money, and expertise. Scouts can't go to every game of every possible player and neither can we. But using data to pre-select players that matters can save resources. Even though there are a lot of things stats can't tell us, what it can tell us can still be very useful to identifying targets quickly and efficiently.

Inspired by Ted Knutson's articles on scouting at statsbomb.com, I used transfermarkt.com and searched for left and right wingers. I found 61 players and I collected their player data from whoscored.com. Apart from Ribéry and Robben's data for this season, Ribéry's 2012/2013 is also shown since this was probably his best season.

Non-penalty goals, shots, assists, key passes, successful dribbles, possession loss, interceptions, and tackles are the data I've retrieved from all players and are all per 90 minutes of playing time. We use this to minimize the impact of differences in minutes players have and give us context of how well a player performs given his minutes for our evaluation.

Defensive stats, unadjusted for style of defense and possession percentage is misleading. A high number of defensive actions doesn't necessarily mean a better defender. In this case, we're just using the raw interceptions and tackles to show an offensive player's involvement in defense. Again, it still depends on the team if it requires it's attackers to track back. In Robbéry's case, Ribéry's partnership with Alaba has required him to cover for Alaba's run forward.

Our aim is to find players that is producing (can/will produce) at least close or on par to Robben and Ribéry's underlying stats in their prime. The will part is too complicated for my average math skills so I'll leave expected goals and predicted metrics to the experts.

The (100) million dollar euro question…

Should we look for a player at his peak? Promising? Veteran? A short-term option or a long-term one? Are we looking for very similar players to Robben and Ribéry? An established and household name? Or someone underrated and less known?

There are many possible candidates for the next Robbéry – from Bayern's squad or in the market. And ultimately, it depends on the club's plan. Bayern's roster has a good amount of promising young players in the senior and reserve team. Götze, Bernat, Alaba, Thiago, Kurt, Gaudino, Weiser and Scholl could very well be the players that will make the wings his in the future. This is our cheapest and optimal choice.

But in the current market, who should Bayern keep an eye on?

These are the parameters I've set to filter out the 63 data at hand: Sh%(minimum): 30. GC%(min):10. Assists(min):0.28. KP/90(min):1. SucDrib(min):1.9.

A (100) million dollar euro answer…

Alexis Sanchez – Arsenal (New arrival)

Position(s): RW / LW / CF

Age: 26

MV: €45 million

The player Guardiola wanted more than Fabregas. Sanchez was already linked to Bayern when he was still in Udinese and was reportedly ready to pay 20M. He eventually moved from Udinese for €25M and to Arsenal for €42.5.

One of the 4 out of the 63 player data I've collected that has shown consistency in all three criteria (Goal Scoring, Chance Creation, and Duels) with Robben and Ribéry. And the most experienced and tested among them. He just moved to Arsenal this season and has been PL's talk of the town saving Arsenal from subpar performances. A player best with the ball at his feet and space to run (3.7 Successful dribbles/90), he can score (0.5 Non-Penalty Goals/90) and set up his teammates(2.8 Key Passes/90 and 0.3 Assists/90). He's also contributes to defense with 3.3 Interceptions+Tackles/90. He is a player we can expect to have immediate impact upon transfer.

Nabil Fekir – Lyon

Position(s): AM / LW / CF

Age: 21

MV: €6.5 million

Another player that fit all three criteria, Fekir is a youth product from France's most prestigious youth academy. The list of players Lyon has produced through it's philosophy (and out of necessity) is outstanding. Their striker, Lacazette, has been receiving most of the attention but it's the man behind the scenes that we should be looking at. Fekir with N'Jie, has been the heart and soul that is pushing Lyon to the height of it's former glory. He is young and only at his 2nd season for Lyon's senior team. Unlike Sanchez, he's at the other end of the prospect spectrum. Young, promising, talented, and cheap. Arsenal and other PL teams are already linked to him.

Asking of him to immediately replicate Ribéry or Robben's output is a very unrealistic expectation. But for such a young age, to produce those results, is noteworthy. Maybe a couple more seasons with Lyon and he'll be ripe for the taking. Former Lyon manager, Bernard Lacombe has this to say about Fekir:

"There is no other player in France that can play this position. Passers, other players, don’t have his range of tricks. There’s something special, particularly about left-footed players, like Messi, like Robben."

Yacine Brahimi – Porto

Position (s) : LW / AM / RW

Age: 25

MV: €16 million

Christian Tello – Benfica (on loan from Barcelona)

Position(s): LW / RW

Age: 23

MV: €9 million

These 2 players with 3 other (Konoplyanka, Douglas Costa, and Taison) only have CL or EL data from whoscored. These are only 6 appearances and is a very small sample size for us to make any balanced evaluation. Still, this are interesting values because comparing to one of CL's top scorer, Douglas Costa, both of their values are better compared to him.

Player NPG/90 Shots/90 Sh%/90 GC%/90 Assists/90 KP/90 TB/90 Disp/90 SucDrib/90 Pass%/90 Int+Tac/90 Brahimi 0.80 2.50 40.00% 32.00% 0.40 1.00 0.00 3.70 5.70 87.06% 1.40 Tello 0.30 1.80 37.50% 16.67% 0.50 3.60 0.00 1.00 3.60 83.06% 1.50 Douglas Costa 0.20 2.10 20.00% 9.52% 0.20 0.50 0.20 2.40 3.00 80.00% 3.60

Honorable mentions (when you can't have it all)

Goalscorers

Robben's trademark are his cut-inside golazos. If we want wingers whose strengths lies on their dribbling and goalscoring, these are potential targets: Son, Ntep, Jese, and Lucas Moura. Note that Jese has less than 10 league appearances – a small sample size which again, we should be cautious on our evaluation of his stats. Ntep is an interesting discovery. He's been piquing interest in Ligue 1 but is still a rough diamond like Fekir.

Piatti is another interesting player. His goal related stats are very good. He scores 0.5 goals/90 with 1.70 shots/90. Effective and efficient. He's not a dribbler like the others above, but he has better assists and key passes than the four mentioned. If explosive ability is something we can forgo, a more experienced player like Piatti can be an interesting choice.

Chance Creators

Robbéry's main contribution to the team has always been their ability to create chances and wreck havoc in opponent's defense. And it's no wonder their chance creation is elite. If we're going to be strict about the amount of assists and key passes /90, we're left with six players. Two, De Bruyne and Payet, out of those six are attacking midfielders. None of those 6 players can match Robben and Ribéry's successful dribbles.

So if we lax the filter on chance creation and duels, we get more names. The standout of which is Isco. This kid is amazing to watch and unlike Hazard, he has a good assists/90 value. Sometimes there might be a simpler and more effective choice but football is still entertainment and flair is something we can all appreciate. He's not going to be cheap but one never knows their future at Real Madrid. After all, Robben was a Los Blancos reject.

Other names that pop up are: Firmino, Di Maria, and Sterling.

Elephant in the room… uhm… where are my favorites?

Hazard. Reus. Draxler. Maybe even Neymar or Bale. And if you're a hipster, Depay. Those are the usual names you'll get in a forum or discussion of Robbéry's heirs. Where are those names? You kind sir or mam might ask. Look at the visualization, they are there but their output are not quite standing out. They may be household and career mode staple but the aim of this project was to identify players with almost similar(ish) underlying stats as Robben and Ribéry.

Which bring me to my beef with Hazard. You might wonder if the metrics are under-appreciating Hazard. The answer is probably, yes. He's a great dribbler. On the pitch, he wrecks havoc on defenses and his ankles. In fact, that's the only criteria where he stands out on the charts. But a player of his reputation, hype, caliber, and price tag should be producing more accountable results, should he not?

Fans of his might say he does the important bit, passes to his teammate, who will pass to a teammate who gets the assist or goal. All of those things Robben and Ribéry does. Robben, selfish jokes aside, has been a selfless saint this past two seasons. Lewandowski stole a goal from him and he didn't even bat an eye. Great and world-class players does important bits that statistics doesn't pick up and yet they still produce recognizable results.

UPDATE:

As promised, I've updated the players' stats and has also added Eriksen, Schalke's new wonderkid Leroy Sane, Messi and Ronaldo for a bit of fun, and some Bayern players like Alaba, Bernat, Götze, and Müller.

Laxing the filters I’ve used in my previous post, a previously honorable mentioned shows up.

Kevin De Bruyne - Wolfsburg (new arrival)

Position(s): AM / LW / RW

Age: 23

MV: €28 million

My earlier parameters for shooting has filtered him out due to his shooting percentage. De Bruyne’s name has been linked not only to Bayern but to other big European clubs by various media. He’s a wanted man and for a very good reason. His key passes and assists is on Ribery’s level.

@SteMc74 recently shared the Expected goals per 90 and Expected assists per 90 of various players and only 3 players are expected to have more assists than De Bruyne from his prediction model. De Bruyne currently has 23 assists in all competitions this season.

Although Ribéry thinks that he’s not a winger that Bayern might need.

"De Bruyne is a superb player. But he's a different kind of player than Arjen or me. He's not a player that receives the ball and then looks to dribble against packed defenses. He's superb when he has space in counter attacking situations. At Bayern you have 3, 4 meters and not much space. But he's still young and can learn. Reus is a player like De Bruyne and also needs space."

His dribbling stats are on the low end of our parameters. Götze has 2.60 successful dribbles per 90, a .30 difference to De Bruyne and he is from a team that mainly counterattacks while Bayern doesn’t usually have a lot of spaces to run and dribble in. But there are no wingers today that posts Assists and Key Passes that comes near to what Ribéry’s. A creative force in the wings like Robben and Ribery is one of Bayern’s main source of chances.

And there’s only one other player that can dribble his way into a tight defense. Messi.

So after all that...

Has your favorite passed the statistical acid test?

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I'll be updating the charts as we progress into the season and even add more players. So if you want to suggest any player, let me know.

Feel free to play around with the above visualization. I hope you enjoyed this little project and I hope I added something to this discussion.

Any mistakes are mine.

You can read more of my work here.

Thank you for reading.