How Clinical is Jordan Rhodes?

In my last post I wrote a little about Sheffield Wednesday lacking an out-and-out goalscorer last season, highlighting Jordan Rhodes as one of our strikers who lacked a goalscoring touch last campaign.

Now we all know that Rhodes is a prolific striker at this level, scoring 95 goals in 207 championship games. But his lack of goals towards the back end of last season got me questioning how many goals he will actually bag us, whether he has the qualities needed to take us up and whether or not we even needed to sign him in the first place…

I’ll start by asking how clinical is Rhodes?

How will Jordan Rhodes do next season?

In years gone by he has been a consistent ‘20 goal of season’ striker, scoring over 20 goals in three consecutive seasons for Blackburn Rovers. When you dig a little deeper though you can see that despite this being an impressive record, his chance conversion rate isn’t that great.

In the 13/14 season he finished as the league’s second top goalscorer. He scored 25 goals from 134 chances, giving him a chance conversion percentage of 19% meaning it takes him on average just over 5 chances to score 1 goal. This isn’t a dreadful record but sadly for Rhodes and Wednesday fans this was his most clinical year to date.

Rhodes enjoyed his best Championship years for Blackburn Rovers.

In the 14/15 season he scored 21 goals from 135 chances giving him a chance conversion percentage of just 16%, meaning he needed just over 6 chances to put the ball in the net. Then there is the 15/16 season where he scored 16 goals from 115 chances. This left him with a chance conversion percentage of 14% meaning he needs just over 7 chances before he’s bulging the net...and this isn’t even the worst of it.

Last season he scored 3 goals from 28 chances meaning that he converted 11% of his chances...can a club get promoted with a striker who needs just over 9 chances before he scores a goal? In my opinion…

Brighton and Newcastle were both promoted via the automatic promotion spots last season and both had prolific and clinical strikers. Glenn Murray scored an impressive 23 goals from 108 chances, meaning he finished 21% of all the opportunities he received! Whilst Dwight Gayle finished a whopping 26% of his 90 chances meaning he also finished last season with 23 goals!

If Wednesday want promotion, we need a striker who scores either 1 in 4 chances like Gayle or someone who scores 1 in 5 like Murray...but wait a second, don’t we already have one of those lads at Hillsborough?

Do The Wednesday have this kind of quality up front?

Like I said in my last post, Gary Hooper scored 26% of the chances he got last season, the same amount as Newcastle hitman Dwight Gayle. Sadly though he only got 23 chances compared to Gayle’s 90. Fernando Forestieri got the most goalscoring chances for The Owls with 115.

If Rhodes got 115 chances last season and scored 11% of them then he’d have only scored around 12-13 goals...not particularly impressive. Whereas if Hooper had as many chances as Forestieri and finished 26% of those chances then he’d have scored a jaw-dropping 30-31 goals last campaign! I’m literally dripping like a knackered fridge at that prospect…

Gary Hooper is statistically The Owls best finisher. Does he deserve to start?

For me these stats show that we didn’t really need Jordan Rhodes, as we already had Gary Hooper banging them in. In my opinion Hooper has the goalscoring touch we need to get promoted but with the price tag attached to Rhodes, the Scot is more or less guaranteed a starting spot…

Looks like we’ll be relying on Jordan for goals this year. Fingers crossed he’s at his best.

All stats, facts and figures were lovingly given to me by the guys at www.WhoScored.com.

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