The 10 Ligue 1 players to crash in the last six months
Robin Bairner
- 25 Feb 2022 10:02 CST
- 4 min read
Paris Saint-Germain continue to dominate Ligue 1, but their questionable domestic performances have dominated headlines around France.
The Parisians have struggled to produce cohesive team performances, which have seen their individual players suffer.
This has been detailed by SciSports, a leading data analytics company, which analyses the performance of over 60,000 players and gives them a rating based on hundreds of in-game data points.
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Although PSG are into the last 16 of the Champions League and will surely regain their domestic crown, their lacklustre performances see them dominate the players whose level have dropped most significantly this season.
While the spotlight falls on Lionel Messi for his disappointing displays since joining from Barcelona in the summer – he has only two Ligue 1 goals to his credit – it is actually Neymar whose level has dropped the furthest.
The Brazil international has struggled to influence games all season, while a recent injury issue has seen his level plummet more than 10% over the course of the last six months.
Messi, however, follows him up after an unexpectedly difficult transition from the Camp Nou side.
The pair are far from the only PSG players in this list. Perhaps surprisingly, Kylian Mbappe comes in fourth, despite making a number of match-winning contributions this term. His presence, though, only serves to highlight the disjointed nature of the Parisians’ attacking unit.
As such, the superstar pair are Ligue 1's worst performers this season - at least on a relative basis compared to how they have been in the past.
Georginio Wijnaldum, whose form since arriving from Liverpool has been catastrophic, and Keylor Navas also find themselves on the list.
Navas is one of three goalkeepers in the top 10. The others are Bordeaux veteran Benoit Costil and Metz shot-stopper Alexandre Oukidja.
Costil’s Bordeaux team-mate Marcelo is third, which is testimony to him being frozen out of the action with Lyon in the first half of the season.
Similarly, Marseille striker Cedric Bakambu is 10th on the ranking largely because of his lack of competitive football before joining up with OM in the summer.
| Player | Club | SciSkill Decline |
| Neymar | PSG | -12.1 |
| Lionel Messi | PSG | -10.2 |
| Marcelo | Bordeaux | -9.7 |
| Kylian Mbappe | PSG | -8.1 |
| Benoit Costil | Bordeaux | -7.8 |
| Georginio Wijnaldum | PSG | -7.0 |
| Alexandre Oukidja | Metz | -6.2 |
| Denis Bouanga | Saint-Etienne | -5.6 |
| Keylor Navas | PSG | -4.8 |
| Cedric Bakambu | Marseille | -4.5 |
How is the SciSkill ranking calculated?
Over the course of a season in Serie A, there are players who will enjoy increasingly poor performances and increasingly positive performances.
FootballTransfers, in partnership with SciSports, has determined 10 players over the last six months within Serie A whose performances have declined to a higher degree than anyone else.
SciSports explains how our development ratings are gathered:
"Among others, a positive development could be boosted by more playing time, playing time on a higher level or better performances on the pitch.
"A negative development could be due to the player being active on a lower level than he used to play, bad performances or the fact that he does not play that often as he used to do.
"A SciSkill Development of 0.0 could indicate that a player is performing exactly like our algorithm expects him to do. Another reason could be inactivity (e.g. a long-term injury or suspension)."
