We continue our look back at the 2023 NWSL season to find the top-5 players in each position group according to StatsBomb’s OBV (On Ball Value) metric. This measurement takes into account passing, dribbling & carrying, defensive action, and shot data to assess a player’s overall impact on their team’s likelihood of scoring, or conceding, a goal.

If you’re just joining, welcome! You’ll want to bookmark goalkeepers, center backs, right backs, left backs, defensive midfielders and center midfielders to get caught up. In this one we’re finally moving into the final third to review the top-5 central attacking midfielders from the 2023 NWSL season.

Onward!

Pass .03 | Dribble & Carry .08 | Defensive Action .01 | Shot -.03

Not to spoil the list but you’ll be unsurprised to know that Dribble & Carry numbers are quite high among the top 5 (with a couple exceptions), and is Fishlock’s highest. Digging a little deeper, what really stands out is Fishlock having one of the lowest rates of being dispossessed, .90 per 90, second lowest of CAMs with at least 900 minutes played.

That safety makes her an invaluable part of Laura Harvey’s team, and is quite unique in the NWSL. The sheer number of possessions often leads to attacking playing getting the ball at their feet quite frequently when compared to other leagues. As a result, they tend to take more risk. Fishlock is different.

However, you’ve probably noticed the .03 Shot OBV, which is essentially the result of Fishlock trying to score outside of the box bangers. A thing I wholeheartedly endorse, even if the data doesn’t.

One thing that surprised me was the low number of key passes (passes that lead to a shot). Some of this must be Harvey’s conservative style that had the Reign tally the second lowest expected goals (xG) per 90 last season, only above woeful Chicago.

Still, I anticipated a higher number. Though there’s also a bit of a quality/quantity thing (or a moderately low sample size, you decide) going on, because .10xG per shot is quite a good average. It suggests more risk could’ve been taken with her passing, but also could have been something Harvey didn’t want her doing anyway.

Pass .02 | Dribble & Carry .03 | Defensive Action .03 | Shot .03

Won’t lie, this name surprised me at first. Then looked at the numbers and it made sense. The numbers are solid across the board, and none are negative, which is an important factor in OBV, but also nothing that stands out as truly threatening.

What this suggests to me is that McCaskill is probably playing the wrong position. This all-around game is probably best deployed as a box-to-box midfielder, where the task is to get the ball to a player with more creativity or direct threat to goal.

Or, if you’re Casey Stoney, she’s your ideal brand of industrious attacking midfielder and you sign her in the offseason even though you have Jaedyn Shaw (more on her later).

Pass .07 | Dribble & Carry .08 | Defensive Action .04 | Shot .08

Now we’re back to real mf’n attacking midfielders, and it is glorious. Debinha has been a terror in this league for a long time, so none of this is a surprise, though it is fun to see the chaos she wreaks in data form.

Below is a chart of all her carries from the 2023 season. It’s a lot. In fact, Debinha led all CAMs with 1.91 successful dribbles per 90 (min. 900 minutes played). Of her 639 carries, only 130 ended in her being dispossessed, which is a damn near 80% success rate.

Of course then we get to the product at the end of these carries. Kansas City were not good last season, but Debinha still did Debinha things. Her 25 key passes are her lowest since at least 2021 (when StatsBomb‘s NWSL data begins). However, she still managed to get two goals from these passes, but more impressively racked up an average of .11xG per shot.

And speaking of shots, she did that quite well too. It’s not easy to drop a .08 Shot OBV with that many long distance shots, but they’re countered by the times Debinha gets into the box and generates high quality chances, which the data prefers. It’s also dope to see how Debinha overperformed her 4.95 non-penalty xG by scoring a couple outside the box bangers.

Pass .16 | Dribble & Carry .06 | Defensive Action .03 | Shot .07

Hell yeah. Remember how I said there was an exception to the high Dribble & Carry numbers among CAMs? Shaw is it. Her Dribble & Carry is by no means insignificant, it’s just that her passing numbers are truly incredible.

Shaw’s 37 key passes are the highest among the top-5, and with or without corners she creates chances worth an average of .08xG per shot.

This passing ability is what makes Shaw such a rare talent. She’s still a teenager but scans and sees the depth and width of the pitch in seemingly an instant. She’s also capable of a range of passes, including the lost art of the perfectly weighted throughball.

Shaw’s .47 throughballs per 90 lad all CAMs with at least 900 minutes played. In fact the second highest was .33, and if you keep dropping the minutes requirement you’ll find that Shaw still leads Rose Lavelle, who posted a .44 but with 1,103 fewer minutes played.

Also, Shaw’s craftiness extends to her shooting, where her reading of play allows her to pop up in the right place at the right time. Shaw’s shot map is another example of a ton of outside of the box shots being countered by an ability to get around and below the penalty spot to find, take and convert quality chances.

Bottom line: Jaedyn Shaw is awesome tysm for coming to my TedTalk.

Pass .12 | Dribble & Carry .18 | Defensive Action .04 | Shot -.01

Goat tings. Goat tings. Goat tings.

At 37-years-old (now 38) Marta put up numbers that made her statistically the best CAM in the NWSL. That is simply just extremely dope, and shows that while 4 goals and 4 assists may seem average or unimpressive, there are a lot of things that can be done on the pitch to put your team in better chances to score, and Marta still does many of them to perfection.

Let’s start with her largest value, Dribble & Carry. In part because it’s just a super fun visual. Out of her 652 carries only 90 were unsuccessful, which is an 86% success rate. More than that, we can also see how those carries occurred all over the damn pitch. Chances are, no matter where you are, rolling the ball to Marta is a terrific idea to immediately get your team in a better position.

Then there’s her passing, which is varied and incredible. Whether it’s a corner or assisting from the damn center circle, Marta was a threat from pretty much everywhere. Also, despite the second highest number of key passes among the group, Marta leads everyone with a fairly absurd average of .12xG per shot.

Honestly, if you ball out like that I guess you get to then have a shot map that looks like this.

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