When Kevin Nisbet returned from injury in November, the striker wasted little time in showing Hibernian exactly what they had been missing. A cruciate ligament injury sustained in February of last year heralded a 10-month stint on the sidelines for the centre-forward – and, with eight goals in as many Premiership games, Nisbet was looking very much like a man making up for lost time once he entered the fray once more.
It started at Ibrox. Making his first appearance of the season, the 25-year-old was thrown into the starting XI to face Rangers back in November and Lee Johnson’s faith was rewarded with a goal from the Scotland internationalist. Hibs would go on to lose 3-2 but Nisbet’s goal should have served as an ominous warning to the rest of the division.
It acted as the starting pistol and the former Dunfermline man has since embarked on an impressive run of form. Nisbet followed up his goal in Govan with the opener and an assist in the 4-0 win over Livingston in Hibs’ next outing and although he failed to score against Celtic or Hearts – in 4-0 and 3-0 losses respectively – he then got six in the subsequent three games against Motherwell, Dundee United and Aberdeen.
That run was then disrupted by a hamstring strain picked up against St Mirren and the 2-0 win over Kilmarnock at the weekend came just too soon for the striker, who is expected to return to the squad for Saturday’s match against Livingston. Hibs supporters will be hoping that he can pick up where he left off.
The numbers Nisbet was producing since making his comeback were remarkable, make no mistake about it. He is providing 1.43 non-penalty goals per 90 minutes: comfortably the highest rate in the division. For context, Celtic striker Kyogo Furuhashi is second on 1.05, followed by Rangers centre-forward Antonio Colak on 0.81. Across a whole bunch of attacking metrics, Nisbet finds himself rubbing shoulders with the Premiership’s best forwards.
There is an obvious problem, though: Nisbet has played just 529 minutes of league football this season. It means our sample size is too small to make long-term assumptions; that it’s unclear whether or not this is the status quo with Nisbet or if he is simply enjoying a hot streak in front of goal. If we want to find out whether or not his current output is remotely sustainable then we have to dig a little deeper.
Nisbet benefits from being his team’s focal point in attack. His job is to score goals, not provide them, as evidenced by his large non-penalty expected goals (xG) per 90 (0.55) and his non-existent xG assisted, which sits at precisely 0 per 90 (meaning Nisbet is not supplying his team-mates with chances to have a pop at goal themselves). His shot map, too, shows that most of his efforts at goal from open play are clustered around the penalty spot and between the posts. This means that Nisbet is getting into good positions and that his team-mates are fashioning promising opportunities for him to provide the end product.
It should go without saying but, if Nisbet is to pick up where he left off, he will need Hibs’ creative players to keep up their steady supply. Such a high non-penalty xG rate for a striker is a combination of good positioning on the forward’s part but should also be viewed as the attacking unit working well as a whole to feed their most ruthless player with clear-cut chances. It is a two-way street and both parties must play their part.
Eagle-eyed readers will also spot there is a rather large discrepancy between Nisbet’s xG and goals per 90. He is goals per 90 rate is three times the size of his xG – an enormous, unsustainable, over-performance. No one expects Nisbet to keep on producing three goals every two games like clockwork and at some point, the drop-off will come. The only thing that is unclear is how dramatic the inevitable decline will be.
The good news for Nisbet, however, is that there is reason to be optimistic that while it’s unlikely he will be able to keep scoring at his current rate, he can expect to remain one of the Premiership’s most lethal forwards.
You see, there is another metric related to goal scoring that provides an indicator that Nisbet regularly out-performs his xG: post-shot xG. This tells us the likelihood of a shot going in after the ball has been struck, compared to the average player shooting in the exact same circumstance. A comparison between xG and post-shot xG, then, can tell us if a player historically tends to score opportunities that your average professional would not and out-perform their xG – and to what degree.
This is the case with Nisbet – both for the current campaign and previous editions. This year, Nisbet produces 0.55 xG per 90 minutes in the league but has a post-shot xG of 0.8, leaving him top of the pile of the Premiership’s most prolific forwards in this regard. It’s a similar story for the 2020/21 season – the last time Nisbet played a full campaign that wasn’t disrupted by a serious injury – where he produced an xG per 90 of 0.36 and a post-shot xG of 0.48.
There are stark similarities in the areas where Nisbet is excelling this season and in 2020/21, with the effect simply more pronounced this term – suggesting that these figures are achievable on a long-term basis. Last season was not a banner year for the striker, even before the injury, and he will be hoping that his output from that campaign is the exception, and not the norm. And to be fair to Nisbet, Hibs weren’t exactly functioning as a well-oiled machine last term.
Can Nisbet maintain his current goal scoring rate when he is dropped back into the starting line-up? Statistics will tell you no, that a drop-off is inevitable. The question, therefore, isn’t to ask whether he can keep it up. The question is that when it does arrive, how steep will it be?
Past performances and historical data would suggest that it shouldn’t be anything too dramatic. No player can maintain Nisbet’s current level of over-performance over the piece but few Premiership players possess the Hibernian man’s lethal instincts in front of goal, either. His goal return will drop, sure, but don’t bet on the goals drying up altogether.
