Academy Task 5: Finding the best left back of all time

[Crunk]

Hi, I'm Crunk, and my former player was Milton Nunez, who spent his entire career playing left back for AC Romana.

This got me thinking - who is the greatest SSL left back of all time? Well, let's go on a journey to find out. I have skin in this game, but I am nothing if not a data-driven analyst at heart, so I'll be as unbiased as I can.


Step 1 - Get the data

Nerdy sentence alert - I built a nice Python script using Selenium and BeautifulSoup to do some DOM extraction, ripping and parsing the lovely React tables of the index as I clicked through them.

I'm going to feel so dumb when someone tells me that's all in a Google Sheet somewhere.

Obvious caveat: All statistics are correct at the moment of scraping, on the evening of August 1, 2025.


Step 2 - Keep only players listed in the index as D(L) or WB(L)

Pretty obvious, left backs should be left backs. Note that this was done inclusively - WB(RL), D(RLC) also counted, for example. I'll be deep diving this in a bit.


Step 3 - Filter for Longevity

This is pretty arbitrary, but with every SSL player's data at my fingertips, I did an eye test and went with 250+ appearances to signify a long and full SSL career.

This might possibly be somewhat biased against players in earlier seasons when the league was smaller, but whatever - they were playing against guys who were forklift certified, etc.


Step 4 - Find out who actually played left back, or left wing back, for the majority of their careers.

Oh boy. There's no smart or refined way to do this, so it looks like I am hitting up old YouTube videos.

I was left with 23 players after Step 3 - please see below for their inclusion status, with reasoning.

Hol LeDiver - NO - A legendary centre back.
Roberto Scarpetta - NO - A good left back when he played there, but mostly a legendary centre back.
Spack Jarrow - NO - Played centre back.
Furious Chicken - NO - A great left back later in his career, spent too much time as a forward or left winger early on.
Powdered ToastMan - NO - Mostly a centre back.
Ricky Bobby - NO - Dude was a winger/forward, why is in the index tables as WB(RL)?
Adam Knight - NO - Started his career at left back, but transitioned to right back.
Jokull Juliusson - NO - Played centre back.
Yannick Visser - YES - Visser is borderline, having played a bit of his early career as a right back, but we will keep him.
Tom Pedersen - YES - A pure left wing back.
Hugh Mann - NO - Played some right back, became a striker.
Gerald Gerrard - YES - Mostly played the left back position.
Fara Dian - NO - Played midfield and right wing back.
Pierre Houde - NO - Was a centre back.
Sydney Ramirez - NO - Played right back and DM mostly.
Milton Nunez - YES - A left back for pretty much his entire career.
Squall Vercetti - NO - Mainly a centre back.
Mike Rup - NO - mostly a centre back, played a bit of left wing back.
Donna Rumma - NO - Started as a left back, became a centre back.
Deedee Yoker - YES - Very much a left back.
Ask Jeeves - YES - Definitely a career left back.
Matthew Mayhem - NO - played all across the back four, not enough time at left back to be included here.
Pork Tenderloin - NO - He was a centre back.

Please note that my feared bias towards newer players seems unfounded - the vast majority of these guys were S5 or earlier.


Step 5 - Analysis

So, these are the 6 players remaining, and where they mostly played, per my eye test:

Yannick Visser (S3) - A mix of full back and wing back
Tom Pedersen (S5) - Almost exclusively a wing back
Gerald Gerrard (S2) - Almost exclusively a full back
Milton Nunez (S7) - Almost exclusively a full back
Deedee Yoker (S1) - Mostly full back, some wing back
Ask Jeeves (S1) - Mostly full back, some wing back

I include the notes as it should give some context to the data.

Let's pull out some statistics. I'm going to focus on the key statistics, with everything normalised by games played.


Games per goal (or 1 goal in every X games):

Milton Nunez 14.2
Tom Pedersen 17.1
Yannick Visser 18.4
Ask Jeeves 19.1
Deedee Yoker 38.3
Gerald Gerrard 41.1

A clear split here, with the players that played wing back scoring more goals. The only surprise is Nunez, a full back, topping the charts here. This wasn't propped up by penalties, either - Gerrard was the only one who took any penalties, scoring two.


Games per assist (or 1 assist in every X games):

PLAYER
Tom Pedersen 3.0
Gerald Gerrard 3.5
Deedee Yoker 3.5
Ask Jeeves 3.6
Yannick Visser 4.0
Milton Nunez 4.2


Chances created per game:

Tom Pedersen 0.76
Ask Jeeves 0.72
Deedee Yoker 0.71
Milton Nunez 0.69
Gerald Gerrard 0.60
Yannick Visser 0.48

I put both of these next to each other to see if anything popped out - seems Gerrard had the benefit of some good finishing, and Nunez did not. Still, the wing back Pedersen leads the way in attacking stats.


Key passes per game:

Deedee Yoker 3.43
Gerald Gerrard 3.41
Ask Jeeves 2.92
Milton Nunez 2.68
Tom Pedersen 2.58
Yannick Visser 1.98

Yoker and Gerrard made some consistent contributions to build up play.


Interceptions per game:

Gerald Gerrard 3.84
Deedee Yoker 3.55
Milton Nunez 3.50
Ask Jeeves 3.40
Yannick Visser 3.20
Tom Pedersen 3.16

Gerrard and Yoker were also proficient in breaking up the other team's play, apparently.


Key headers per game:

Milton Nunez 0.33
Gerald Gerrard 0.29
Tom Pedersen 0.27
Ask Jeeves 0.25
Yannick Visser 0.21
Deedee Yoker 0.13

Nunez the most adept at putting his head in when it mattered, it seems.


Key tackles per game:

Ask Jeeves 0.25
Milton Nunez 0.24
Tom Pedersen 0.19
Yannick Visser 0.18
Gerald Gerrard 0.15
Deedee Yoker 0.11

Jeeves and Nunez putting in the most frequent key defensive work.


Step 6 - Conclusions

Well, nothing really sticks out here. I was hoping for some obvious winner, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

These are the 6 best left backs the SSL ever produced, and all would be in the conversation for the left back spot if there was a 25th anniversary team or the like.

But in the interests of producing some kind of result, I am going to take all of the statistics above, award 6 through 1 points for each players position in each ranking, and count them up. It's better than nothing.

And that comes out as...

Milton Nunez 28
Tom Pedersen 28
Ask Jeeves 27
Gerald Gerrard 26
Deedee Yoker 23
Yannick Visser 15

And we have a tie. Or do we?

Based on the above, I'm going to say that Milton Nunez is the best left back of all time, and Tom Pedersen is the best left wing back - they played different roles in different systems for almost all of their careers. Ask Jeeves and Gerald Gerrard are painfully close, and could probably have taken it if I'd included other categories.

[RashfordU]

Love the article crunk, very well written

[DivogoJota]

I have received word that the forklift-certified leftbacks who were excluded are indeed distraught

[FuriousChicken]

Love the article, about the data, while it is not fully in a google sheet, you can call the endpoints to receive the data (have a python script to get all matchdata and put it in a json, although that script takes very long, and likely not well optimized at all).

I do also have player data since S12 in a google sheet (although up to date with the award data, so does not have this seasons data in it yet), and am currently working on a datathingy to make it so that we can actually know which games were played as a LD.

Also for your longevity, outside of the last 2 seasons players in the early SSL actually have an advantage, as the league used to have
10/14/18/22 games in the first 4 seasons (before standardizing to 2 leagues of 14/10 game (2 seasons), and the 14/14 games that we had all the way up to and including S19 (before going to 18/18 in S20/21)).

Also a small things with the index labeling, position changes are a thing, this could be the cause for, for example Bobby's showing as WBR/WBL. Unsure how the label exactly labels it, but outside of rookie tables for scouting purposes I basically ignore that part of the index. So it could even be that you excluded a player or 2 which changed position late on who did mostly play DL/WBL.


Btw small question, how did you figure out which player played on which position when? You for example excluded my player (Furious Chicken) for too much time playing as forward and winger (which fair, played a bit over 300 games, and only 75 of those were as DL, with 46 as DR), but I am curious how you even figured this out, as I don't think we really have the data available for this right now?

Edit: Oh ignore this question, I should learn how to read as it is clearly said in the article xD

[Crunk]

Love the article, about the data, while it is not fully in a google sheet, you can call the endpoints to receive the data (have a python script to get all matchdata and put it in a json, although that script takes very long, and likely not well optimized at all).

I do also have player data since S12 in a google sheet (although up to date with the award data, so does not have this seasons data in it yet), and am currently working on a datathingy to make it so that we can actually know which games were played as a LD.

Also for your longevity, outside of the last 2 seasons players in the early SSL actually have an advantage, as the league used to have
10/14/18/22 games in the first 4 seasons (before standardizing to 2 leagues of 14/10 game (2 seasons), and the 14/14 games that we had all the way up to and including S19 (before going to 18/18 in S20/21)).

Also a small things with the index labeling, position changes are a thing, this could be the cause for, for example Bobby's showing as WBR/WBL. Unsure how the label exactly labels it, but outside of rookie tables for scouting purposes I basically ignore that part of the index. So it could even be that you excluded a player or 2 which changed position late on who did mostly play DL/WBL.


Btw small question, how did you figure out which player played on which position when? You for example excluded my player (Furious Chicken) for too much time playing as forward and winger (which fair, played a bit over 300 games, and only 75 of those were as DL, with 46 as DR), but I am curious how you even figured this out, as I don't think we really have the data available for this right now?

Edit: Oh ignore this question, I should learn how to read as it is clearly said in the article xD

Yeah, I spent way more time watching old SSL videos than I was really prepared for. I pretty much skipped through careers in 2 season chunks, looking for the players in lineups. Was a great Sunday morning.

[Hero19]

Great article mate, great amount of data presented.

Media Grade 5/5