League Focus: The Most Valuable Scorers in Serie A

With the title race over and the season nearing its end in Serie A, a period of reflection begins. Who have been the real difference makers over the current campaign and how might you measure that?

One reductive yet still quite revealing method is to look at points won as a direct result of the goals that players have scored. For example, if you were to take out a player’s goal in a 2-1 win, their team would have picked up one point rather than three, meaning that strike has earned the side two extra points, and so on.

Within a category ascertaining player decisiveness, perhaps this particular statistic should be defined as that of a league's Most Valuable Scorer. More layers can be added to it. Not every goal carries the same weight. Some are more important than others owing to context - from the calibre of opponent to the occasion - and their moment in a game and/or a season. But for now let's take these figures as a starting point.

It'll come as little or no surprise to learn that the goals of Napoli striker Edinson Cavani and his counterpart at Udinese Antonio Di Natale have brought more points to their teams [20 a piece] than those scored by their peers. It's hard to overstate their respective importance.

The hat-trick Cavani scored on Inter Milan's visit to the San Paolo on Sunday was his seventh in Serie A. Only Pippo Inzaghi [10], Beppe Signori [9] and Hernan Crespo [8] have recorded more. No one in the history of the league apart from Cavani, however, has ever managed a tripletta against each of Italy's Big Three. That, shall we say, is the hat-trick of hat-tricks.

If that's Cavani's specialty then Di Natale's, you might argue, is doppiette or braces. He has scored six this season and 18 across the last five. Sunday's pair against Sampdoria at Friuli were simultaneously superb and yet typical Di Natale, which is some indication of what a great player he is. The goals also meant Totò broke the 20-goal mark for a fourth consecutive season, a feat only matched by Gabriel Batistuta in the last half a century.

Between the beginning of the 2009-10 campaign and today, he has scored exactly 100 league goals. To put how prolific that is into perspective only Gunnar Nordahl [who scored 121 times for Milan between 1949 and 1953] István Nyers [110 times for Inter between 1949 and 1953] and John Hansen [100 times for Juve between 1948 and 1952] have fared better or as well over the same period of time.

How do we separate Cavani and Di Natale then? Statistically speaking, one way would be to look at the ratio of the goals they've scored to those of the team as a whole. Cavani has contributed 39% of Napoli's total [27 of 70] while Di Natale has accounted for 38% of Udinese's [20 of 52]. Include the four assists they've each laid on for their teammates and those figures climb to 44% and 46% respectively.

Only one player has been more valuable relative to their team than these two this season and that's Germán Denis for Atalanta. Outside of Bergamo, he perhaps doesn't get the coverage his performances deserve, which is strange considering Denis is fourth in terms of goals scored away from home (8) this season behind Stephan El Shaarawy (11), Cavani (10) and Marco Sau (9).

Since joining Atalanta in the summer of 2011, he has found the net 31 times in 68 appearances. Quite remarkable really, considering that when El Tanque was signed for Napoli by Atalanta's current director of sport Pierpaolo Marino five years ago he never really convinced, either there or later at Udinese. 

Denis has contributed 15 points and 42% of Atalanta's goals this season [15 of 36 to be precise] or 53% if you incorporate the four assists he has made. He is arguably more valuable to his particular team in goalscoring terms than any other player in Serie A. But don't labor under the misapprehension that Atalanta are totally dependent on Denis. They're not.

One of the more interesting revelations from this analysis is that his Atalanta teammate, the wonderfully named wide No.10 Giacomo Bonaventura also charts highly. Another product of their famous Mino Favini-led academy, he hasn't scored too many [only seven], but those goals have brought his team 10 points this season. Is it any wonder that interest in the Oasis and Coldplay-loving 23-year-old Juventus fan is high ahead of the summer?

The only players younger than Bonaventura whose goals have brought as many if not more points to their teams than those he's scored this season both happen to play for Milan. Stephan El Shaarawy has found the net just twice in 2013 - a winner away to Atalanta and an opener in the Derby della Madonnina - but those and the 14 others he scored in the league during the first half of the campaign brought 12 points.

Il Faraone has been fatigued since the spring. Some have scoffed at that suggestion asking how a 20-year-old, supposedly full of life can possibly be tired. But the truth is this is his first full season as a starter in Serie A, he has carried a team - and not just any team - on his back for five months and his role isn't that of a poacher, he sacrifices himself, getting through a huge amount of work, often as an auxiliary full-back, which, among other things, presumably explains why he's suffering tendonitis in his knee.

If you think of this season as a relay, it's a good thing in hindsight that Milan ensured El Shaarawy had someone to pass the baton on to. The signing of Mario Balotelli at the end of the January transfer window arguably couldn't have come at a better time. Though bought on the basis that his promising international partnership with El Shaarawy might flourish at club level - which is still the long-term aim - Balotelli has, for the most part, helped Milan maintain the momentum his teammate started.

Eleven goals in 11 games, like the late winner the 22-year-old scored against Torino on Sunday, have won his side 12 points, making qualification for the Champions League, which looked so improbable back in October, a reality.

It's helped of course that Giampaolo Pazzini has more than filled in the gaps. Prepared to accept a place on the bench and prove himself an heir to Inzaghi, his 15 goals have also been directly responsible for 10 of Milan's points. Curiously given that he has almost made as many substitutes' appearances [12] as starts [15], Pazzini could yet have his best season in terms of goals-scored. Up until last night he was averaging one every 107 minutes and only needs five more to better his personal best of 19, which he achieved at Samp three seasons ago. 

Turning our attention away from the upper echelons of the table and to the city of Genova - Pazzini's old stomping ground - another striker, though one formerly of Milan, is rediscovering a decisive edge, and in a relegation battle too. It's the mystifyingly much-maligned Marco Borriello.

Back at Genoa where, lest we forget, he had a reputation-establishing 2008-09 campaign, scoring 19 times only to narrowly miss out on the Capocannoniere title to Alessandro Del Piero, the 30-year-old striker, you feel, will be owed much of the credit if his team do actually manage to stay up. All but one of Borriello's 11 goals this season have helped get Genoa a result. Twelve of their 36 points [33% of their total] can be attributed to various balls flying in off his boot or his head.  

As defiant last stands go, Josip Ilicic also, if a little belatedly, woke up to the prospect of Palermo going down. After a mostly indifferent season in which he was perceived by the fans not to care and came under fire as a consequence, over the last month or so he’s appeared keen to show that, quite the contrary, he is prepared to fight and have a say on whether they survive or not.

Iliciclone, as the sublimely talented 25-year-old Slovenia international is known, whipped up a storm, making it rain, so to speak, from the end of March through April. A scorer in five consecutive games, equaling the feat Fabrizio Miccoli pulled off two seasons ago. Palermo went unbeaten in all of those matches, picking up 11 points, of which Ilicic was directly responsible for eight.

It's a shame then that he picked up a knock against Inter and couldn't shake it off in time to make an impact against Juventus, where his goalscoring streak and chances of matching Şükrü Gülesin's 62-year club record of finding the net in seven straight games ended, along with Palermo's run of positive results. Last night's 3-2 defeat to Udinese makes staying up unlikely.

One hundred and eighty minutes of the season remain. A goal here can clinch or steal a place in Europe. A goal there can guarantee safety. Juventus may have wrapped up the Scudetto last weekend and Napoli a Champions League place last night, but the season isn't over yet. There's still a lot to play for.