Pedro vs. Willian
With Raheem Sterling now set to join Manchester City, we all knew that would happen sooner or later, it does come as a blow to Chelsea who were eyeing the 20-year-old Liverpool attacker. Unflustered by this transfer dealing, Chelsea could be looking to sign another winger with great ability and someone who has delivered on the big stage.
Barcelona forward Pedro didn’t have the greatest of season’s last time around as his place in the team was taken by Luis Suarez. The Spanish attacker lost his place and was limited to a handful of starts, but most of his game time came from off the bench. In search of regular football, Pedro could be looking to sign up with Jose Mourinho but with Eden Hazard guaranteed a starting place in the team, Pedro would be replacing Willian or will he? We use Squawka stats to compare the two wingers and see just who comes out on top.
Appearances limited, but impact is huge
The first thing we have to clear up is that most of the stats are compared based on ‘per game averages’. This might have a better effect when comparing the two players as Pedro played way fewer minutes last season than Willian, although the average could be skewed towards Pedro as he came off the bench a lot more times, especially when Barcelona often wrapped up games.
Willian on the other hand, had to play through most of the games from the start and that would hurt his stats a lot. Passing is key both players and for both teams, Pedro has the better pass completion stat compared to Willian, the Spaniard has an 87% pass completion rate per game compared to 85% for the Brazilian. It gets a little better for Willian though as he has nearly double the number of successful passes per game with 32 compared to the 18 for Pedro but as stated earlier, that is a factor as Pedro has played fewer minutes and games this season.
Playing for a team like Barcelona should give you lots of opportunities to play your teammates through, Pedro averaged 0.17 assists per game last season while Willian barely got it home with only 0.08 assists per game. However, Willian seems to be the better player when it comes to key passes with the 1.3 key passes per game compared to just 0.5 key passes per game by Pedro.
The Brazilian also managed nearly double the chances created per game stat with 1.36 chances per game compared to the 0.71 for Pedro. One thing that Willian does wonderfully is to run with the ball and he had a successful take on % of 67% last season compared to 52% for Pedro. The major decision to take for Pedro and Jose would be whether to invest in the 27-year-old. The stats say that Willian had a better season last time around and does give Chelsea a better balance down the left thanks to his great work rate. Would Pedro work at Chelsea this well? Only Mourinho can tell that.