THERE are few sights in football more exhilarating than watching your team's player drive at the opposition, skipping past men seemingly at will and causing havoc with the ball at their feet.
Dribbling has always been one of the ultimate expressions of skill in the beautiful game and direct players who can thunder forward and take on their opposite number will always be fan favourites.
With that in mind, we've dug into the dribbling statistics of each Premiership player this season in a bid to discover which players are the best in the league at running with the ball at their feet.
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The graphic above details the number of runs each of the Scottish top-flight's best dribblers attempt over the course of a game, and their average success rate this season. And, as we can see, there are perhaps a few suprises in there.
Ross County's Michael Gardyne, for instance, has the highest dribbling success rate of any Premiership player this campaign, succeeding around 68% of the time. Rangers winger Sheyi Ojo isn't far behind, with Aberdeen's Niall McGinn rounding off the top three most successful players.
At the other end of the scale, we have Kilmarnock winger Liam Millar (42% successful) and Livingston's Aymen Souda (43%). Both of these players have relatively low success rates when compared to the Premiership's top dribblers, but it is worth bearing in mind that these success rates are still above average when judged against the entire league.
But when we judge each player by how many dribbles they attempt per 90 minutes played, St Johnstone's Matty Kennedy is the clear outlier. The 25-year-old generally attempts 12 dribbles per match: no other top-flight player comes close to matching this. Motherwell winger Jermain Hylton has the second-most dribbles with 9.9 and his team-mate Sherwin Seedorf is just behind him with 9.4.
Aberdeen midfielder Lewis Ferguson and particularly Rangers captain James Tavernier both have relatively high success rates (Tavernier has the fourth-highest dribbling success rate of any Premiership player) and should be encouraged to run with the ball more than they currently do; generally speaking, they are better than the majority of their Premiership contemporaries.
Gardyne and Kennedy represent two extremes in approach; the Ross County forward relies on quality, not quantity, while the reverse is true of the St Johnstone winger. So, which approach is the best to take?
The second graphic tells us how many successful runs each of the Premiership's best dribblers average over the course of the game and at first glance, Kennedy's approach appears to be the more effective one. Motherwell's trio of Seedorf, Hylton and James Scott are all excelling here, too, as is Sheyi Ojo.
Players like Kennedy, Seedorf or Ojo can be frustrating for fans on the occasions they give the ball away. It can seem cheap to supporters in the stands at times but as the data shows, fans should remain patient with these capricious players. They will inevitably lose the ball now and again - some more than others, admittedly - but their overall attacking output clearly pays dividends.
Consistency is clearly a valuable attribute but while someone like Gardyne rarely gives the ball away, he doesn't contribute anywhere near as much as someone like Kennedy. Ultimately, it boils down to the manager's preferred tactics. If ball rentention is a fundamental aspect of their team's play then a player like Gardyne is invaluable; if a manager would rather take a high-risk, high-reward approach then a player like Kennedy is crucial.
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