Just how often does Romelu Lukaku score against ‘Top 6’ opposition? His biggest critics will point to his recent woeful performance during the Manchester Derby, and say that this is just the latest in a long list of sub-par performances against ‘better’ opposition. In this article, I will study Lukaku’s goalscoring history, and determine whether there is any evidence behind the claim Lukaku doesn’t perform well against ‘Top 6’ opposition.

This article consists of 4 short sections, consisting of simple analysis:

Studying Lukaku’s goal distribution

Comparison: Lukaku vs Kane

Comparison: Lukaku vs top strikers from current/previous seasons

Comparison: Lukaku vs 16 current Premier League players

1. STUDYING LUKAKU’S GOAL DISTRIBUTION

Lukaku is currently the 30th highest all-time goalscorer in the Premier League, which is a mightily impressive statistic for a 24-year-old. Prior to the 2017-18 season, Lukaku has scored 85 goals in 181 appearances over 5 Premier League seasons (4 seasons at Everton, 1 season at West Brom). Study the graph below.

The graph shows a distribution of Lukaku’s goals. For each season that Lukaku has played in*, I recorded the teams that he scored against, and the finishing positions of those teams in the season. After looking at all 5 seasons, I summed up the “goals per final position” into the above graph, with the ‘Top 6’ highlighted in red.

Notice how Lukaku has scored 6 goals against teams that went on to finish 1st. 3 of the 6 goals came in a single match at the end of the 2012-13 season. Lukaku’s West Brom faced Manchester United, who had already been crowned champions, in one of the oddest games in recent memory. The final score was 5-5, with substitute Lukaku scoring a hattrick in Sir Alex Ferguson’s final game of charge.

Lukaku has scored 15 of his 85 goals against teams who went on to finish in the top 6. Therefore, 17.6% of Lukaku’s goals have been scored against teams who finished in the top 6. I will name this percentage the Top Six Ratio (TSR). The higher the TSR, the more goals scored against ‘better opposition’, and can be used to determine if a player scores well in the ‘bigger’ games of the season.

Lukaku having a TSR of 17.6% is a meaningless statistic by itself. I will now study the goals scored by other top strikers, and determine their ratios for a comparison.

* I cannot include any current data from the 2017-18 season, due to not knowing the final positions of teams. All data in this (and all following) graphs excludes the current season for this reason

2. COMPARISON: ROMELU LUKAKU vs HARRY KANE

Harry Kane has scored 78 goals in 116 appearances. The graphs below show his goal distribution along with Lukaku’s:

Kane’s distribution of goals is more orthodox. There is a clear correlation which shows that the worse the opponent, the more goals he scores. This is unlike Lukaku, where there is no clear correlation. Lukaku is unpredictable. He has scored the same amount of goals against teams who have finished 1st and teams who have finished 19th.

It is worth bearing in mind that in the seasons we’re studying, the teams Lukaku played for (West Brom then Everton) finished 7th, 11th, 11th, 5th, and 8th. The team Kane played for (Tottenham) finished 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and in his breakout season, 6th (but only making 10 appearances). Therefore, in most of the seasons being studied, Lukaku gets 2 games per season more against ‘Top 6’ teams than Kane, due to ending consistently outside of it. Likewise, Kane gets 2 more games against non-‘Top 6’ sides than Lukaku. This has the effect of lowering the TSR of players whose team finishes in the ‘Top 6’ consistently, whilst increasing it for all non-‘Top 6’ players. This should be considered when calculating the TSR values in the following sections. This problem disappears when comparing strikers of regular ‘Top 6’ teams (such as section 3), who will all have the same amount of fixtures against each other.

3. COMPARISON: LUKAKU vs OTHER TOP STRIKERS FROM PREVIOUS SEASONS

Below are the distributions of goals of various prominent strikers from the last few years:

There are a few interesting things in these graphs. In all of his seasons at Liverpool, Luis Suarez never scored a goal against a team that eventually finished 1st. This is also true of Diego Costa. However, in 2 of the 3 seasons Costa played, it was actually Chelsea that finished in 1st place. Therefore, in Costa’s case, the graph is limited to the two games against Leicester City in their memorable 2015-16 season, in which he failed to score.

It is important not to focus on the magnitude of these graphs. Sergio Aguero and Lukaku both made more than twice as many appearances than Diego Costa did, for example (prior to this season, Aguero and Lukaku had 181 apps, Costa had 89). What is important is the distribution. Aguero scores just as many goals against ‘Top 6’ opposition as everyone else. This could be described as a ‘Big Game factor’; the ability to put in good performances (and score) regardless of the quality of the opposition.

As explained before, the Top Six Ratio (TSR) is the best way of quantifying this ‘Big Game factor’. Below is a graph comparing the TSR values of the same players:

Diego Costa has the smallest TSR ratio, with only 13.4% of his goals against teams who finished in the top six. Aguero has the largest TSR ratio, scoring an incredible 22.9% of his goals against ‘Top 6’ opposition. There is a noticeable gap between Aguero and the others. This leads me to conclude that Aguero is the best ‘Big Game’ player, scoring consistently in matches against ‘Top 6’ opposition.

As for Lukaku? Very average. There certainly doesn’t seem to be any evidence to support the ‘he doesn’t score against top 6’ claim.

4. COMPARISON: LUKAKU vs OTHER CURRENT PREMIER LEAGUE STRIKERS

The section before looked at selected elite strikers from the last few years. In this section, I will look at 13 other current Premier League strikers, alongside the strikers still playing in the Premier League from the last section:

Jamie Vardy and Dwight Gayle have the highest TSR ratio, with 33.33% of their Premier League goals scored against ‘Top 6’ opposition. For Dwight Gayle, there is an argument that scoring 5 out of 15 against ‘Top 6’ teams can be too small a sample size for an effective TSR; a freak good game against a top team would lead to a disproportionate increase in TSR. This is why I consider Vardy’s record to be more impressive. 14 of his 42 goals prior to this season came against ‘Top 6’ opposition, and bear in mind that this also includes the season where Leicester themselves were part of the ‘Top 6’, meaning two fewer games than other strikers.

So to answer the articles original question, how does Lukaku’s record against top 6 opposition rank? Overall, I would say that Lukaku scores a ‘less than average’ amount of goals against ‘Top 6’ opposition. He is ranked 13th out of 17 in the TSR comparison of current strikers, which isn’t particularly impressive. It’s true that Kane is below him in this ranking. However, considering the extra two games per season where Lukaku had chances to improve his TSR rating, I would consider Kane’s TSR to be better.

Thank you for reading. If you found this article interesting, follow me on Twitter @AFootballPanel to keep up-to-date with all articles I produce, or read my only other article so far about the standard of Premier League refereeing