With 14 goals to his name, 24-year-old Everton striker Dominic Calvert-Lewin is having an impressive 2020/2021 Premier League season. In this piece, I will look into the reasons behind his success in front of goal and his other contributions to Everton by analysing his role, tendencies, goal scoring ability, physical attributes and movement.
Overview
- Name: Dominic Calvert-Lewin
- Date of birth: 16 Mar, 1997 (24 years old)
- Height: 1.87m|6ft1.6in
- Position: ST (playing as a lone striker in the 2020/21 season)
- Preferred Foot: Right
- Nationality: English (7 caps)
- Current club: Everton
- Contract expires (transfermarkt): Jun 30, 2025
- Market Value (transfermarkt): €45.00m
Typically, a target man is a type of forward who serves as the focal point for a team’s attack and possesses a tall and strong build. A target man also usually has good hold-up play and strong aerial ability. Dominic Calvert-Lewin is the type of forward who has all the skills and traits of a traditional target man along with the added advantages of great athleticism, mobility and speed.
As a mobile target man, Calvert-Lewin is able to, both, occupy central spaces and operate in the channels. With great leaping ability, he can win the ball in the air exceptionally well and is a major threat from set pieces. He also possesses the robustness to withstand contact and uses his body well to hold the ball up and bring his teammates into play.
Out of possession, he is a combative, relentless worker who brings aggression and pace. He makes a proactive effort in intensely challenging defenders and uses his body well. In possession, he doesn’t have great creative output or elite technical ability. However, Calvert-Lewin does possess a great first touch and has the ability to control long balls with his head, chest and feet. This, combined with his athleticism and physicality, makes him an extremely valuable asset against opposition teams that press high. Everton often use long balls from Pickford to alleviate pressure and/or build high tempo attacking plays through Calvert-Lewin.
Here are some examples of this ability and his first touch.
As seen in some of the footage above (and somewhat shown on his heat map) a lot of his duels tend to come on the left side of the pitch. Calvert-Lewin seems to have a preference for operating in that channel and he tends to stick to the LCB/LB (the RCB/RB of the opposing team). Furthermore, Everton seem to target their goal kicks/long balls towards the left side of pitch. On the left side, they usually have a quick wide outlet player in the form of Richarlison. In these situations, Everton can utilise Calvert-Lewin’s aerial prowess to potentially flick the ball into free space for Richarlison to run into or challenge for any potential second balls (Richarlison also brings a similar intensity and tends to be duel heavy).
As previously mentioned, Calvert-Lewin’s exceptional leaping ability makes him a huge threat from crosses and set pieces. Calvert-Lewin tends to positions himself near the far post and tries to catch defenders on their blindside with a combination of his athleticism and micro adjustments in his movement. Most of Everton’s crosses come from the left side of the pitch (Digne and Richarlison) so he usually makes his runs on the right side near the far post.
Lastly, one of the main reasons for Calvert-Lewin’s success in front of goal are his mental attributes. He has a high level of ‘desire’ and really shows great determination and confidence towards scoring goals. His in-box instincts, intelligent movement, and subtle adjustments allow him to get into great shooting positions, from where he is able to finish first time.
Underlying Numbers
Now that I’ve gone over his role and style of play, let’s look at this underlying numbers.
Dominic Calvert-Lewin is slightly underperforming his npxG but he’s also generating one of the highest non-penalty xG (per 90) in the Premier League this season. He ranks fairly well against some of the top forwards from other leagues (I picked out a few for comparison). This indicates that Calvert-Lewin is getting into good shooting positions and taking high value shots. He also ranks in the 93rd percentile (versus Premier League forwards) for non-penalty goals per 90 (0.54).
Here, we look at the shot quantity and shot quality of Premier League forwards (and a few top forwards from the other 5 leagues for comparison). This gives us a slightly better understanding of Calvert-Lewin’s shooting profile. These two vizzes above both demonstrate that, he produces an adequate number of shots and they tend to be of high quality. This provides further context for his goal scoring prowess and suggests that he hasn’t really been wasteful with his shooting this season (not as high volume as some of the other top forwards). It indicates that he’s getting high value shooting locations/taking high quality shots.
I think it’s also important to note that while Everton do somewhat cater their method of chance creation towards Calvert-Lewin, they don’t possess many top creators (as compared to the personnel of other teams with top forwards). They also don’t rank well as a squad for chance creation (12th for xG, 14th for Shot-Creating Actions, 11th for xA). Some of their top creators like Lucas Digne and James Rodriguez have spent time a decent amount time on the sidelines due to injuries. Digne and Rodriguez have missed 9 and 12 games respectively. Based on Understat data, Calvert-Lewin accounts for about 40% of their accumulated xG this season.
To get a better understanding of Calvert-Lewin’s shooting profile, here is his shot map for the season. As somewhat expected, most of his shots come from inside the box. Through his intelligent movement and in-box instincts, he’s able to get into great shooting positions and take high value shots. Here’s his goal map to see where exactly he’s scored from this season.
Calvert-Lewin’s goal map indicates that he has an impressive ability to finish high quality chances in the penalty area.
Now, we look at his aerial ability. Calvert-Lewin’s proactive nature and tendency to combat in the air shows up well on his underlying numbers. He’s contesting an above average number of aerial duels while winning them at a high rate. Furthermore, with 6 of his 14 goals coming from headers, he also leads the Premier League charts for headed goals.
These can give us a bit of an idea of how much Calvert-Lewin tends to get involved in Everton’s general play, where he receives the ball and his usage. Here, we see that he prefers to take few touches and a lot of them are in the box. He also ranks quite poorly chance creation and on ball ability metrics. This doesn’t necessarily mean he is poor on the ball. Rather, it suggests more about his role as an outlet player and his usage in the team. A forward who consistently gets into good shooting positions and and doesn’t demand the ball to feet very much can be extremely valuable to many top teams. And, despite ranking poorly here, Calvert-Lewin is fairly good at linking up play and passing the ball out wide. Passing and moving is a fairly basic concept/tool but one that can be extremely useful in creating chances and one that Calvert-Lewin does pretty well. His contribution to Everton’s chance creation might not be great on the above graph but he contributes a lot through his movement. With his skillset, instincts, and physical abilities, he’s able to create chances for himself and his teammates through manipulating space with blindsided runs, runs in behind and positional adjustments.
Movement/Runs in the box
Lastly, I analysed stills from clips of some of his goals and shots to get a better understanding of how effective his movement is.
Clip 1
Clip 2
Clip 3
Clip 4
Conclusion
Consistency is key. Dominic Calvert-Lewin had a great start this season but endured a goal-less spell midway into the season. However, that barren run also coincided with injuries to two of Everton’s top creators (Digne and Rodriguez). So, it’ll be interesting to see how he finishes off this season considering some of those creators are back from injury. And, despite their time away from the pitch, Calvert-Lewin has still managed to score 14 goals and generate one of the highest npxG90 in the league.
As a mobile target man with good goal scoring instincts (and only 24 years old), he possesses a rare and quite effective skillset and I believe he’ll continue to perform at a very high level.
Thank you for reading!
Mustafa
twitter.com/MKFtbl
