West Ham’s Javier Hernandez vs Manchester United’s Romelu Lukaku – A Statistical Comparison

Javier Hernandez vs Romelu Lukaku – A Statistical Comparison

West Ham United have been a busy club this summer as Slaven Bilic is trying to take the Hammers back to a place in Europe, after a disappointing campaign last time out. The manager has been looking to bring in reinforcements for many places in the squad and has found a world class option in Javier Hernandez from Bayer Leverkusen, to lead his side’s attack.

Chicharito is expected to start against Manchester United in the first game for both the clubs in the new Premier League season, and will be up against Belgian star Romelu Lukaku, who cost Manchester United a whopping £75m. So how has the former Manchester United man fared against the current one, in the last couple of seasons?

The Mexican international, who was surplus to requirements at Old Trafford, has spent the previous two years with Leverkusen and has turned into a goal scoring beast. To add to his 17 goals and 2 assists in the 2015-16 season, Chicharito managed 11 goals and 3 assists last season in the Bundesliga. But that does not come close to the goal scoring prowess of Lukaku, who picked up 18 goals and 25 goals respectively in the last two seasons.

The Belgian star is more of a target man, who has won 2.5 and 3.7 aerial duels per game in the last two seasons. He also has an average shot accuracy of around 50% in the last two seasons, but Chicharito has been more accurate a threat to the opposition goal, averaging a shot accuracy of more than 55% in the last two seasons. However, he has won just 1.3 and 1.1 aerial duels per game in the last two seasons in Germany.

Lukaku is slightly a more creative outlet as well, averaging 1.3 and 1.4 key passes in the last two seasons, compared to just 0.8 and 1 key pass per game for the Mexican. He is as well, not a better dribbler than the big Belgian, who averages 1.7 and 1.2 successful dribbles per game in the last couple of seasons. Chicharito, in comparison, has just 0.6 and 0.9 successful dribble per game in the last two seasons.

One area that Chicharito seems to be improving in, is his first touch. While he had 2.2 unsuccessful touches per game in the 2015-16 season, he brought that down to just 1.8 per game last season. In comparison, Lukaku, who had 2.3 unsuccessful touches per game in the 15-16 season, is still criticised for his first touch, and had 2.1 unsuccessful touches per game last season.

With the kind of goal scoring prowess that the Belgian has shown in the previous seasons, expect Lukaku to continue fighting for the Golden Boot award from week one. But that doesn’t mean Chicharito will be ball watching as he will try to break into the top-5 of the goal scoring charts come end of the season.