By the numbers: Fabio Silva’s stats as he looks to shine for Wolves
Wolves are in the market for a striker to ‘rebalance the squad’ this month, but the club are happy with how Fabio Silva is developing.
Silva was not a conventional club-record signing by any means, with the inexperienced 18-year-old arriving on a five-year deal from Porto for £35million over the summer.
He has, though, had more minutes in the Premier League since Raul Jimenez’s injury, and now seems a fair time to look at the Portuguese’s contribution for Wolves thus far.
So, let’s look into the stats behind his first few months at Molineux.
Shots
Of course, Silva has managed to get off the mark in the top flight – winning a penalty at Burnley and then finishing soundly from the spot.
In doing so, he became Wolves’ youngest-ever scorer in the Premier League, and also the youngest-ever Portuguese scorer in the Premier League.
That solitary league goal has come from a total of 16 shots from the teenager.
Four of those have been on target, six off target, and the other six blocked.
Silva is fifth on the Wolves list for total shots, with leader Pedro Neto having twice the amount of his compatriot.
Worth noting, though, is he has 2.7 shots per 90 minutes – only fractionally behind Jimenez on 2.8. So, the youngster is having a go.
Touches
Silva has done well in certain games – at Arsenal after Jimenez’s injury and off the bench at Burnley perhaps the best examples.
There have been others, however, where he has struggled to get involved at all.
Against Brighton last weekend, he had 35 touches.
That was the lowest of any Wolves starter and fed into the overall picture of him not seeing much of the ball.
In total, he has had 220 touches in the top flight – putting him 16th out of the 20 players Nuno Espirito Santo has used this campaign.
Looking at his other starts, Silva had 34 touches against Tottenham, 22 against Chelsea and 26 against Villa.
Breaking it down, he has 18.3 touches a game. Jimenez this season, meanwhile, had 41.9 touches a game.
There is definitely room for improvement in that regard.
Headers
A general theme since Jimenez’s injury has been getting crosses into the box but nobody being there to get on the end of them.
And Silva has lost the most aerial duels for Wolves so far this term.
You cannot fault him too much as he is clearly still developing physically, but he has lost 31 aerial duels in the league – winning 14.
It is not all bad as the 14 he has won puts him 24th of all forwards in the Premier League for successful aerial battles, a fairly respectable position.
But heading is not his strong suit, at least not yet.
Minutes played
Perhaps the biggest thing to come out of Silva’s stay so far is the actual time he has had on the pitch.
Because of Jimenez’s injury, he has been thrown in at the deep end and had far more game time than he probably would have expected.
His 525 minutes are pretty low when it comes to the whole Wolves squad, but it is well above the amount of fellow summer signings Vitinha (172) and Ki-Jana Hoever (119) – players who also came in with very little senior experience.
Looking further afield, he has had more league minutes than Chelsea’s Olivier Giroud (359), Tottenham’s Lucas Moura (451) and even Diogo Jota (509) since he swapped Wolves for Liverpool – although he has recently been injured.
Still so early into his career, every moment is extremely useful to Silva. Considering just how quickly the game time has come for him, he has done alright.
