Crystal Palace duo Wilfried Zaha and Michael Olise have been selected as two of the best attackers currently playing outside the Premier League’s ‘Big Six’ clubs.
Both talisman Zaha and new boy Olise - who joined the Eagles for around £8million last summer from EFL side Reading - have been two of Palace’s standout players this season in front of goal.
Ivorian winger Zaha is currently the joint top-goalscorer in SE25 with eight goals this season and was recently nominated for the Premier League Player of the Month award for February.
Olise meanwhile has enjoyed a breakout campaign in the top-flight and has more assists (five) than any other player under the age of 21 in the league this season.
Now, according to Betvictor’s supercomputer, the pair have been picked as two of the forward players in the best XI that don’t play for Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal, or Tottenham Hotspur.
The research, using data from this Premier League season, uses more than 25 per 90-minute performance statistics for outfield players and factors in both their offensive and defensive contributions.
The report states: "Players were sorted and grouped by shared position and their statistical profiles were input into the ranking algorithm.
"The algorithm is designed to find the player with the most optimised output per 90-minutes by calculating a Z-score (standard score) per performance statistic and average Z-score per player.
"A high average Z-score indicates that a player is outperforming other players in that position across multiple statistics."
Zaha (0.63) and Olise (1.01) - who has the second-highest Z-score of any outfield player - are in the XI alongside Newcastle’s Kieran Trippier, West Ham duo Arthur Masuaku (0.94) and Declan Rice (0.56) plus Wolves’ Jose Sa (1.91) and Ruben Neves (0.57).
Kelechi Iheanacho (0.65) of Leicester and Brazilian international Raphinha (0.52) of Leeds make up the forward places in the team.
Olise narrowly beat out teammate Conor Gallagher for the attacking midfield spot, despite playing predominantly on the right wing for Palace this season.
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The report adds that the 20-year-old is the “top-performing player for xA (expected assists) per 90 with 0.30, top for goal creating actions with 0.76, top for completed passes into the 18-yard box with 2.28, and top for progressive carries with 11.0 per 90.”
Zaha beat Aston Villa’s Philippe Coutinho meanwhile on the left wing and scored in the top five or top ten players for every pass-based statistic he was measured on.
