Whose headers are better?

After watching Nadir Ciftci blaze several close-range headers off target during the first leg of Celtic's Champions League qualifier versus Stjarnan FC, I thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at headed shot attempts by strikers in the SPFL Premiership last season to answer the question, whose headers are better? (long story short, it ain't Ciftci)

The scatterplot below shows the relationships between total headed shots, headed shots on target and headed goals (all per 90 minutes played) for 41 strikers who played at least 500 minutes last season. All the data come from either BBC match reports (for shots) or Soccerway (for minutes played).

Click to Enlarge

The first thing to notice about the plot is that goals p90 (dot size) is only loosely correlated with total shots and shots on target. This is due to the fact that differences in shot conversion rate are mostly random in the short-term.

For example, if we just look at goals, we might conclude that 5'8" Leigh Griffiths (Celtic) is one of the best in the league at headed shot attempts. I don't know any Celtic fan who would agree with that statement. A better explanation is that he got lucky with the relatively few attempts he took last season. Thus, goals p90 is a not a very useful metric for judging whose headers are better.

Turning our attention to the more useful metrics, total shots and shots on target, we can see from the plot that three strikers really stand out: Josh Magennis (Kilmarnock), Brian Graham (formerly of St Johnstone) and Edward Ofere (formerly of Inverness Caledonian Thistle).

Ofere played relatively few minutes for ICT, so I don't consider his data to be very reliable. That leaves us with Graham and Magennis. Of the two, I would regard Magennis as the better header since his accuracy was much higher than Graham's. The latter got roughly as many headed shots on target as you would expect from the number of shot attempts (hence his dot is close to the regression line). Magennis, on the other hand, got many more headers on target than expected (hence his dot falls way above the line). I think it's safe to say the Northern Irishman was probably unlucky not to score more headed goals than he did last season.

So whose headers are better? In my opinion, the answer is Kilmarnock's Josh Magennis. Don't believe me? Just ask is team mate Jamie Hamill...

Josh Magennis demonstraing his excellent head shot accuracy