La Liga 2016/17: Best players so far according to stats

The La Liga season is heading towards its business end and it has already thrown up plenty of surprises and new performers. As always, there are also the usual consistent performers like Luis Suarez, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi who find themselves near the top for goals scored and assists.

While goal scoring and the assist leaderboard is predictably dominated by the Real Madrid and Barcelona players, the tackles leaderboard does not feature even a single player from the two Spanish giants. Without much ado, let us take a look into the top scorers, assist leaderboard, highest pass % accuracy and the tackles leaderboard of La Liga at the end of March.

Top Scorers

The La Liga is heading towards the business end with 28 matches being played already (27 in the case of Real Madrid). Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Cristiano Ronaldo are predictably the frontrunners in the race for the pichichi award.

What makes this list interesting is the fact that unfancied players like Iago Aspas, Sergi Enrich and Gerard Moreno also make the top 10. Some huge names like Neymar, Bale and Benzema surprisingly fail to even make the top 10 list for top scorers in La Liga. While Bale has been injured for a large part of the season, the likes of Neymar, Benzema and Morata have not had their shooting boots on.

Atletico Madrid duo Kevin Gameiro and Antoine Griezmann are both in the top 10 with both the Rojiblancos forwards reaching double digits.

Assist Leaderboard

While the goalscorers run away with all the plaudits, the ones who set up the goals also deserve a lot of credit. Real Madrid midfielder Toni Kroos heads the list, closely followed by Luis Suarez, Pablo Piatti and Neymar.

Suarez, Messi and Neymar all make this list while the only other Real Madrid player other than Toni Kross is Brazilian Marcelo. Some unexpected or surprising names on this list are Las Palmas’ Jonathan Viera and Valencia’s Dani Parejo.

The players who make both the top scorers and assists list are Luis Suarez, Lionel Messi, Antoine Griezmann and the extremely impressive Pablo Piatti.

Highest pass accuracy

Unsurprisingly not many of the assists leaderboard make it to this list as they would have attempted certain risky passes in order to set up their team-mates. Most of the players on this list are either defensive midfielders or centre-backs whose main job is to circulate the ball and keep possession.

This can be seen from the fact that Barcelona’s Samuel Umtiti tops the list with an incredible pass accuracy % of 93. Toni Kroos is the only player from the assists leaderboard to make it to the top 10 in this list as well showing his incredible efficiency and importance to the Real Madrid squad.

The list is dominated by Real Madrid and Barcelona players with 3 players from each team making this list. From Real Madrid, Toni Kroos, Nacho and Kovacic make it while Barcelona, Umtiti, Rafinha and Mascherano make the list.

Top Tacklers

Tackling is one of the most important parts of the game and these players have not been afraid to put their foot in and win the ball back for their respective teams. A peculiar aspect of this list is the fact that not even a single Real Madrid and Barcelona player make it to the top 10.

On-loan Real Madrid youngster Marcos Llorente is on top of this list with an incredible 74 tackles followed by Real Betis man Petros.

Other famous footballers on this list include Real Sociedad’s defensive midfielder Illaramendi and Atletico Madrid full-back Filipe Luis.