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It's been a good few days for Arouna Kone . A first Premier League hat-trick and a shiny new contract on Sunday, mountains of praise in the time since.

On Tuesday, he was compared to the legendary Didier Drogba , and now it's official; he's better than Sergio Aguero and Luis Suarez.

Sort of.

According to research conducted by the the CIES Football Observatory, the Everton frontman is the fourth-best performing striker in Europe's 'big five' leagues this season, ahead of some of the continent's bigger names.

CIES' research uses a data-driven and objective methodology, which uses six Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure players’ productivity in six areas of the game – rigour (tackling), recovery (intercepting), distribution, take on, chance creation and shooting.

And Kone, whose treble against Sunderland took him to five goals for the season, scores well in the striker section.

In fact, only the prolific Robert Lewandowski, superstar Neymar and in-form Leicester forward Riyad Mahrez rank higher.

Manchester City star Aguero is fifth on the list, while Suarez ranks joint-seventh, alongside Tottenham's Erik Lamela. Raffael (Borussia Moenchengladbach), Michy Batshuayi (Marseille) and Nolito (Celta Vigo) complete the top 10.

Elsewhere, Arsenal duo Santi Cazorla and Mesut Ozil lead the way in the defensive midfielder and attacking midfielder stakes, while Manchester City's Nicolas Otamendi is the top-ranked central defender. Paris Saint-Germain's Serge Aurier is the top-ranked full back.

You can read the full list of rankings here , while CIES Football Observatory explain their research methods here .

What do you think, Everton fans? Is Kone worthy of comparison with Europe's best at the moment?