5.43 – Welcome To Donal McDermott – Post 38

Yesterday, Huddersfield Town unveiled two new signings, one more unexpected and exciting than the other. I mean no disrespect to Oscar Gobern, but we knew what to expect with his signing, but Donal McDermott, tormentor-in-chief for Bournemouth during the playoffs was unexpected and, coming off the back of the news that the previous next-best-thing wanted to move on, lightened the mood a little. I wanted to do a little statistical analysis about what we might expect, and, as luck would have it, the two players’ pre-Town careers haven’t been a million miles apart. You’ll remember I did a post about Pilks a few days after his injury. All the stats from then remain the same, and have been used here, though I’ve deleted the Huddersfield Town ones from a lot of them. Firstly, if we start with games played.

Before he signed for Town, Pilks had played 91 games (all for Stockport); Donal has played far, far fewer – only 38 appearances, and a good proportion of those off the bench – similarly, Pilkington’s 19 goals overwhelms McDonald’s 7.

However, where they are even is in games PER goal – Pilkington’s 19 came one every 4.79 games, and McDermott’s came at an only slightly less impressive 5.43 games per goal; coincidentally, he has the same ratio for games per assist, too, which outstrips Pilkington’s, which was at an assist every 7 games when he joined. Pilkington was scoring at a goal every 8 games, and McDonald at one every 8.29 games – again both very similar.

Here’s the chart (obviously, Pilkington is at the top)

The only other thing I wanted to look at was McDermott’s AMMP – which was 0.67 to Pilkington’s 1.50 – they were both hamstrung by team-mates here; Town’s best run came with Pilks out of the team, and Bournemouth’s run-in was pretty poor in terms of points, so McDermott lost out there.

The stats, then, say that we’re getting someone a little more raw than Pilkington was, but perhaps with a shade more emphasis on assisting goals than scoring them. However it end up, he’s an exciting signing, and I wish him all the best – as I will to Pilkington when he leaves the club. Good move by Lee Clark, and full thanks to Dean Hoyle.