André-Pierre Gignac and his lack of output

Thought: The moment to let a club legend leave is one of the most difficult decisions for directors

One challenge for analysts and any decision maker at football clubs is to maintain objectivity. Therefore, it is important to recognise various cognitive biases, like the impact of emotion on our decision making and availability bias (the concept of just remembering specific, stand-out moments when analysing a player). Knowledge of cognitive biases is always important, but especially in the case of a club legend like André-Pierre Gignac.

Gignac is one of the best players in the history of Liga MX; with 5 league titles, 37 liguilla goals and more goals than any other player in the history of Tigres UANL. Searching Gignac’s name in Youtube shows compilations of his golazos, which can stick in the mind (availability bias), creating a very positive image of the player.

Data analysis can help to remove and challenge cognitive biases, and create a more objective analysis. The most used metric to analyse the goal-scoring ability of a striker is xG. xG isn’t perfect, but it removes the impact of finishing, goalkeeper errors and in the long-term is a more effective metric to predict future goals than past goals.

From the 99th percentile in 2021-22 to the 27th in 2024-25, from 0.57 xG to 0.29 xG p90. Gignac has reduced his attacking output season-on-season, with a drastic drop this season. Right now, Gignac isn’t generating sufficient danger for a team like Tigres. Also, the team already has a striker creating more. Nicolás Ibáñez has generated more than 0.5 xG p90 in the previous 2 seasons.

One problem with André-Pierre Gignac is his decision making in the final third. Gignac has always been a high-volume shooter, using the quantity of his shots to generate a high xG, rather than showing more patience to only shoot from better quality positions.

Shot or position “quality” refers to the xG value of the shots attempted, a player that attempts lots of long-range shots, or shots from difficult angles will have a lower xG per shot.

It’s important that average shot quality doesn’t drop too low. In 2021-22 Gignac generated the highest xG per game in the league, with 4.68 shots per game and 0.12 xG per shot. His xG per shot in 2024-25 is 0.07. Therefore, according to the average xG value, Gignac has to shoot 14 times to score once.

Gignac is a high-quantity, low-quality shooter. The average shot quality of Ibáñez is higher, despite attempting a similar amount of shots per game.

But he scored 7 times in Apertura 2024, finishing quality is also important, right?

The difference between goals scored and xG can fluctuate between different seasons, but with a larger sample size, we can understand fairly well the impact of finishing quality.

In the last 5 seasons, Gignac has scored 64 goals from 61.3 xG. More than expected, but the difference is less than 5% and therefore not significant. He scored above his xG last season, but it isn’t likely that we’ll see a continuation of that trend.

Also (since 2020), André-Pierre has attempted 181 foot shots with less than 0.05 xG, and has only scored once. His golazos aren’t frequent, and Gignac is wasting valuable possession with his bad decision making.

It isn’t impossible, but after analysing the evidence that’s available today, it seems that Gignac can’t generate sufficient attacking output for a team with the expectations of Tigres. It could be the moment for Tigres to use Ibáñez as their starting 9, or to look for a medium-to-long-term replacement.

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