On November 10th, I published an article titled, Dortmund Need More From Maximilian Beier. In that article, I laid out a case that Maximilian Beier’s struggles were seriously hurting BVB’s season, being partially responsible for the club’s offensive struggles. Here’s what I wrote:
Last season, [Beier] got off to a very slow start but ultimately finished with a respectable eight goals and five assists in only around 1,500 minutes. He seemed to be on a decent upward trajectory, which makes his performances this season all the more underwhelming. He only has two goals and one assist in the league, despite playing almost 600 minutes
His two goals and one assist in his first 581 Bundesliga minutes amounted to 0.46 G+A/90. Since then, in 569 minutes, Beier has five goals and two assists, for 1.14 G+A/90. The reason for this is fairly simple: in my No Duharticle in December, I pointed out that Dortmund’s lack of offense, despite heavy presence in the opposition third and penalty box, comes down to a systemic lack of shot attempts, with Beier being a prime offender. However, since I published my first article in November, Beier’s shots/90 have essentially doubled from 1.54/90 to 3.00/90.
Niko Kovac seems to have recognized Beier’s uptick in form, with him getting the lion’s share of the starts in recent weeks over Karim Adeyemi, in addition to praising him in the media for his attitude and work ethic. If Borussia Dortmund are to continue their second half surge in search of success in the Bundesliga and the Champions League, then Maxi will need to continue this form until the end of the season.
Here’s a little P.S. gripe that doesn’t belong in the body of the article. In my article on Beier in November, I was able to break down a bunch of Maximilian Beier’s advanced metrics like progressive passes, take-ons, shot-creating actions, e.t.c. because that information was provided, at the time, by FBRef.com. Stats Perform, the parent company of Opta, a major supplier of commercial football analytics and the source of FBRef’s advanced analytics, rescinded the agreement to share their datawith FBRef on account of an alleged failure by FBRef to uphold their end of the agreement.
I’m not here to take a side and say that Opta is “wrong” and that FBRef is “right,” because I don’t know the terms of the agreement and what FBRef did or didn’t do to fail to uphold it, but the end result is that the best public source of advanced football analytics is now gone, and that is a major detriment to small outlets like us for whom a paid subscription to the data is simply not in the cards.
