Jamie Carragher makes big Dominic Calvert-Lewin call but stats back him up

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Jamie Carragher has made a big call on 23-year-old Everton forward Dominic Calvert-Lewin. Stats back the ex-Liverpool man up, however.

Jamie Carragher has named the best five strikers in the Premier League this season for Talksport. The usual names are there, of course, but with one particularly notable addition.

Carragher believes Dominic Calvert-Lewin is the third-best striker in the league right now. That puts him above Danny Ings and Jamie Vardy on this list and behind only Mohamed Salah and Harry Kane.

“Number three – I’m going to go with Dominic Calvert-Lewin,” he says. “He’s finally shown that he’s a true Everton number 9.”

It’s a big shout, less in what Carragher says but in the placement. The other four were standouts last season, too, with Vardy – one place below Calvert-Lewin – winning the Golden Boot.

But the stats back Carragher up here. As we wrote yesterday, Calver-Lewin isn’t just competing at the top of the goalscoring charts but he’s performing like a top-level striker.

The 23-year-old leads the league in NPxG, which is a way of judging the quality of a player’s chances without penalties. It means that after eight games, no one is consistently getting in better positions than Calvert-Lewin.

That’s a wonderful sign for any striker as it suggests his goals aren’t a fluke. He’s not getting lucky with long-range strikes or errors elsewhere – he’s getting in the right places and giving himself the best chance of scoring.

And yet he’s also outperforming his xG better than anyone except Son Heung-Min. That says he’s finishing at the elite level, too, putting away chances that he perhaps shouldn’t.

Combine those two stats and you’ve got a player who is absolutely playing like one of the very best in the Premier League.