Can Kelechi Iheanacho become 'world class'?

Back in 2016 Kelechi Iheanacho was tipped to become a world-beater. He was scoring goals with ease for Manchester City as an 18-year-old and everyone was wondering how good he could become. 

He finished the 2015/16 season as City’s third highest scorer with 14 goals and 5 assists in all competitions, including leading the English Premier League in goals-per-minute (averaging a goal every 94 minutes).

He started the next season off with a bang, scoring and assisting in a 2-1 win over Manchester United. A 19-year-old dominating in the Manchester Derby was almost unthinkable, and it made City and Nigeria fans excited for the future. He joined an exclusive list that included the likes of Wayne Rooney and Romelu Lukaku when he scored his 10th Premier League goal before the age of 20, and was even nominated for the 2016 FIFA Golden Boy award.

A young Iheanacho with Manchester City.

Unfortunately, new manager Pep Guardiola was somehow unsatisfied with the Nigerian striker, and sold the starlet to Leicester City for £25m. This is where things started to get complicated. Kelechi only started 7 Premier League games in the 2017/18 season, and continued to be a back-up for the prolific Jamie Vardy for the next 2.5 years - only getting significant playing time in the FA and EFL Cups.

Even at the beginning of the 2020/21 season Kelechi was not in the first-team, and was expected to watch his side from the bench for most of the campaign. However, as we now know, this was not the case. Significant injuries to attacking players Cengiz Under, Harvery Barnes, and James Maddison created openings in the squad and Iheanacho took his chances well, if not perfectly.

After starting only two EPL games in the season before 2021, Kelechi hit unprecedented streaks of playing time and goal-scoring form for his Leicester career in the second half of the season. Before March 2021 Kelechi had scored five goals and assisted three, with only one of his goals coming in league play. However due to the aforementioned injuries in addition to the sidelining of club legend Jamie Vardy with a groin issue, Kelechi was given the chance to lead the Leicester line for the rest of the season.

Kelechi with his Premier League Player of the Month award.

His March began with a goal against Burnley. Three days later he scored again in his side’s 2-1 win over Brighton. The next game he netted his first-ever Premier League hat-trick in Leicester’s 5-0 demolition of Sheffield United. In a span of 11 days the Nigerian had scored as many league goals (5) as he had in the entirety of the last season. A week later he was responsible for every goal in Leicester’s 3-1 win over Manchester United in the FA Cup, scoring two and assisting one goal. This performance was especially significant for the fact that it catapulted him to the top of the all-time African scorers in the FA Cup list, with his 14 goals eclipsing Didier Drogba’s 12.

He won the March Premier League Player of the Month award, but his form didn’t stop there. He either scored or assisted in all of the four league games in April, netting four and providing two goals. During April he also sent his side to the FA Cup final, scoring the lone goal against Southampton at Wembley to send the Leicester fans into a frenzy. He concluded the season with two goals in May, while also helping his side lift the FA Cup after defeating Chelsea in the final. 

Unfortunately for Leicester the end of their season was bittersweet as they failed to qualify for the Champions League, however, their fans had the FA Cup glory and the shock rise of Kelechi to make up for the blow.

Iheanacho finished the season with 19 goals in all competitions (12 in the league, 4 in the FA Cup, and 3 in the Europa League), a career high. He’s shown us what he’s capable of when given consistent play-time, and the advanced statistics give us a closer look at just how good he was.

He led the league in goals-per-minute (the second time he’s done that in his career) by averaging .74 goals every 90 minutes, .07 more than second-placed Harry Kane. Moreover, when you remove penalties from the equation the stats favor Kelechi even more since the Nigerian did not score any penalties this season. The gap between first-placed Kelechi and second placed Edinson Cavani grows to .09. Kelechi ranked second in Non-Penalty Goals + Assists/90 with .86, behind Harry Kane who averaged .96. 

The more advanced statistics which measure how efficient the player was with his shots also highlight Kelechi’s magnificence. He averaged .21 goals per shot (7th in the league), meaning that every one in five of his shots ended up in the back of the net.

Expected goals, which measures the probability of every shot being a goal based on location, is a popular way to evaluate the quality of chances a player has taken over the course of a season. The 24-year-old Nigerian averaged .43 non-penalty expected goals per 90 minutes, ninth highest in the league. This means that Kelechi was one of the top players in the league in terms of getting into good scoring positions.

For a striker however, actually scoring goals is generally more important than getting into good positions, which is where comparing the player’s actual goal return and expected goals helps us evaluate how clinical the player was. Kelechi overperformed his non-penalty expected goals by 5, meaning that the Nigerian was expected to score 7 league goals based on the quality of his chances but actually scored 12. Iheanacho was third in the league in this metric (non-penalty goals minus non-penalty expected goals), behind Tottentham’s Son Heung-min and Gareth Bale.

With Jamie Vardy continuing to age (he turns 35 in January), it’s expected that Leieceter boss Brendan Rodgers will need to rely more heavily on the Nigerian striker next season. But the question on my mind is: can he replicate this form across an entire season?

Kelechi and his compatriot Wilfred Ndidi.

Overperforming your expected goals does mean that the player shot better than expected, but it could also mean that their goal-scoring form is unsustainable and that they will revert to the average in the future.

His goals per 90 stat indicates that he would lead the league in goals if he played as many minutes as the likes of Harry Kane and Mohamed Salah, which would almost surely make him a ‘world class’ player. However, we know this is unlikely to happen as opposition defenses would be better prepared to mark him if he was starting every week as opposed to the limited minutes he received last season.

On the other hand, Kelechi had a run of over 10 games towards the end of the season where he started every game - and he scored in most of those games. It will be interesting to see what happens next season.

Regardless, it’s inspiring to see how he has rebuilt his career and stuck himself into the conversation of the best strikers in the Premier League.

All stats came from fbref.com