Osimhen V Vlahovic: We Take A Look At The Stats As David Ornstein Reveals Chelsea’s Interest In Both Players

Journalist David Ornstein has confirmed that Chelsea are keeping tabs on Victor Osimhen and Dusan Vlahovic as they target a new number nine.

Speaking on The Athletic Football podcast on Monday, Ornstein revealed the two strikers are being considered by the Blues’ recruitment team.

Neither player is likely to come cheap, with values ranging from €80m to €120m so we’ve decided to compare Osimhen and Vlahovic based on their performances in Serie A since the beginning of the 2020/21 campaign.

Press the next page as we go through the stats (sourced from FBRef) for both forwards.

Goals And Assists

On this key metric, both Osimhen and Vlahovic are pretty well matched, with the Nigerian coming out on top ever so slightly.

Over the past two and a half years, the Napoli star has averaged 0.84 goals and assists per 90 minutes to the Juventus player’s 0.78.

If we switch to expected goals (xG) and assists (xA), there is a pretty similar disparity between the pair (Osimhen – 0.74 per 90 and Vlahovic 0.65 per 90)

Non-Penalty Goals – xG

By subtracting a striker’s expected goals (xG) from the actual number of goals they score (excluding penalties), we can get a better idea as to how good the two players are at finishing compared to the average forward.

On this statistic, Vlahovic is superior. The Serbian international has outperformed his xG by 7.2 goals since the beginning of the 2020/21 season.

In contrast, Osimhen’s figure of +3.2 is still impressive, but it suggests he isn’t as good at putting away his chances.

Aerial Duels

Neither striker is actually that strong in the air, going by their aerial win percentages in Serie A over the past two and a half seasons.

They are pretty similar aerially with Vlahovic winning 46.7% of his aerial duels for Fiorentina and Juventus.

Since moving to Serie A, Osimhen has won 45.2%, which is even less impressive when you consider he has had 131 fewer aerial challenges than Vlahovic during that time.

Key Passes

A modern striker needs to be able to participate in build-up play. Not everyone can be Erling Haaland!

To assess their involvement in the game, we have looked at key passes, which is the pass directly leading to a shot by a teammate.

Here, Osimhen is slightly superior, averaging 1.08 key passes per 90 minutes, compared to Vlahovic’s 0.78.

Touches Per 90

Similarly to key passes, the number of touches that a forward has per 90 minutes does give us a good indication in terms of how involved they are in the match.

Considering Osimhen is more likely to provide a key pass, it is surprising then to see that Vlahovic has more touches per game (30.4). Osimhen has only 26.9 on average.

An explanation for this is that Vlahovic goes deeper than Osimhen to pick up the ball, with the Napoli striker seemingly more willing to wait until the ball comes to him.