Tag: Player Analysis

Around this time last year I looked at five Ligue 1 prospects outside of the four traditional big clubs in France, as a way of illustrating the deep talent pool that exists in Ligue 1. Looking back a year later and it’s interesting to see where each prospect stands. Both Nordi Mukiele and Yves Bissouma made moves to clubs outside of Ligue 1 in RB Leipzig and Brighton respectively, Jonathan Bamba was signed by Lille, while Wylan Cyprien and Ismaila Sarr stayed at their respective clubs.

With Mukiele, his sample size of 711 minutes in the Bundesliga makes it rather hard to have strong opinions on his season either way. In the case of Bissouma, it’s fair to say that Brighton haven’t gotten their full value in season one. That’s not to say that Bissouma hasn’t shown signs of the upside that he has but the totality of his season has been shaky (though there’s also something to be said about how tough it can be for new players to transition their play style into a Chris Hughton led side).

Both Cyprien and Bamba have more or less been at the same level that they were the season prior, but at least Bamba moved to a club that has a very good chance of playing in the Champions League next season. Sarr is arguably the only player to have their stock rise a year later, as he’s added more functional playmaking to complement his direct style of play and become a more well-rounded threat, setting himself up for a potential noteworthy transfer this summer.

In the spirit of last year’s iteration, this article will follow a somewhat similar format. Instead of focusing solely on Ligue 1 young talents, we’ll be looking more at Europe as a whole. None of the three players profiled currently ply their trade in one of the big clubs in their respective leagues. As well, each player is 23 or under as of March 29, 2019. It follows the same idea where we’re trying to profile players that at the very least will have several prominent years ahead of them.

Without further ado, let’s get to it:

Ritsu Doan (Groningen, 20)

As the modern game has continued to evolve, it’s become more apparent that to succeed at the highest level, wide players must have a requisite level of passing skills to go along with high level athleticism.

Though it's not uniform across the board, as you’ll find wingers who don’t necessarily fit that combination and still perform at a top level, more and more of the best teams employ wingers that have that combination of on-ball skills and upper tier athletic gifts.

That’s what makes someone like Ritsu Doan an interesting winger to profile. On the surface, Doan’s statistical production doesn’t necessarily jump off the screen as both his shot and xG contribution is rather ordinary.

Yet, when watching tape of him, it’s hard not to get intrigued. Sure, playing in the Eredivisie can make it a bit tough to judge young attackers, but given that Doan plays for a smaller Eredivisie side in Groningen, those worries get alleviated to some extent especially given that they rank below average in both shot generation and expected goals for.

In particular, Doan's awareness to attempt high value passes is cause for some optimism. He's first among Groningen players in both throughball passes created and open play passes into the box on a per 90 basis. He's got half of what you would want from a young attacking talent: when he sees an opening to try a high value pass, he's not afraid to take his shot.

As well as his passing, Doan's dribbling abilities are quite pronounced. He's able to apply his skills on the ball to a number of situations, giving himself some versatility. If he's covered in tight areas, he can maneuver himself into some open space to ponder his next action.

He can beat people off the dribble in one on one situations on the flanks, and he has the sudden explosion to pounce on an opening and put an opponent on their heels. Combine that with good balance and some shiftiness when on-ball, and you've got yourself a wide player with some dynamism.

That dribbling ability can also act as a bit of a curse for Doan, as he's prone to having tunnel vision and not picking out an open teammate while he's in full stride. As well, it's not uncommon to see him running into people when he's carrying the ball forward.

But these things are forgivable for a young wide player who isn't on a good team, given that the upside he flashes is tantalizing. Ritsu Doan seems like a good candidate for a bigger Eredivisie club to take a chance on, perhaps not quite yet for the likes of Ajax or PSV, but more so clubs on the next level.

Stefano Sensi (Sassuolo, 23)

Of the three players listed, Stefano Sensi is the one most likely to make the jump to a major European club. At age 23, it makes sense given that he's close enough to his prime years that bigger clubs can envision him coming into their midfield and making an immediate impact.

Sensi is a fascinating figure within Italian football given that he's been looked at as a potential dynamic midfielder for the future. As for this season, he's been part of a Sassuolo side that's had some success playing an adventurous possession game in attack, doing a little bit of everything from the midfield and linking things together.

It isn't hard to see the appeal of Sensi's game. He has decent mobility and the shiftiness to carry the ball on occasion, especially during transition opportunities. On-ball, he's a smooth operator with an array of passes in his arsenal.

He's constantly aware of his surroundings because of his scanning, and in situations where he feels that he's going to be pressured by the opponent, he's happy to recycle the ball and continue possession via one touch passing. Sensi's scanning gets to another part of his game that's quite effective, because of his awareness, he's able to position himself during buildup play where he presents himself as an option for the CB in possession.

If the oppostion tries to take him out as a possible passing option during buildup, he'll try to shift a little bit in one direction to get himself into open space and receive a pass. When you add in the recognition and awareness to attempt difficult long passes, you have the type of midfielder that should fit well at larger Serie A clubs.

One area that will be interesting to monitor is how Sensi would fit defensively at a new club. Sassuolo have not been good on defense this season as they're 5th from the bottom in Serie A in xG conceded. Sensi's defensive output is decent when accounting for Sassuolo's defensive style.

In metrics that try to analyze how much a club presses, like passes allowed per defensive action or how far away from their own goal a team perform's defensive action, Sassuolo rank at the lower end of the table. Even within Sassuolo's defensive inadequacies, you'll see moments where Sensi's defensive awareness is present, whether it be shutting off passing lanes or making timely gambles on defensive actions.

The reported links to Milan make sense given that Milan have similar pressing metrics to Sassuolo, but they've done what Sassuolo haven't been able to in ably suppressing shot volume and location, so transitioning could be smoother there than at other clubs.

Enock Kwateng (Nantes, 21)

Ligue 1 is always fascinating to analyze when it comes to young talents, as the league offers the best balance of high upside prospects at affordable pricing. This upcoming summer will be of particular interest because there are three right-backs who don't play for major French clubs that have relatively high ceilings: Enock Kwateng, Valentin Rosier, and Youcef Atal.

Atal has the highest ceiling of the three, and it's been interesting seeing him play further up the pitch as the season has progressed, but Rosier and Kwateng aren't slouches in their own right. Kwateng in particular has had a productive season with Nantes at age 21.

The defensive output is what stands out here, but I'm more fascinated with what Kwateng can do during possession. He's a decent dribbler but I wouldn't necessarily call him a very good one as a full-back. Where he's particularly good is when he collects a loose ball and immediately makes a snap decision to try and beat the initial man before laying it off to a teammate.

When he's positioned high on the right side, he'll try to make an off-ball run behind the backline to receive the ball in space for potential crosses into the box, though his crossing to this point is fine but nothing special. Kwateng's passing outside of crosses is where I'm most intrigued. It can look a bit awkward at times, but he's shown some decent passing abilities.

If a teammate makes a run to the right wing near the box, he'll attempt lob passes to that area. He also has some comfort attempting passes into the right halfspace if someone is open.

Kwateng's defensive work is a bit of a mixed bag despite the high defensive output. His high positioning during possession means that a quick turnover in play would leave him exposed when play goes the other way. Kwateng has a penchant for gambling when trying to pressure opponents and that leads to him playing a part in unraveling the team's defensive structure.

His awareness off-ball can be lacking as there'll be times where the opposition gets on his blindside and makes runs to the edge of the box. However, his recovery speed is quite good so more times than not, he's able to compensate that with applying late pressure on the opponent to make up for earlier mistakes. When he has to defend in isolation situations on his side where he's not had to move much previously, he's disciplined in not overextending himself.

It's certainly encouraging that in his first full season in a top five league, Enock Kwateng has held his own, though that doesn't necessarily mean that he's tipped for future stardom. What makes him intriguing is that reports suggest that his contract will be expiring after this season, making him a candidate for a free transfer in the summer.

While I don't necessarily think that Kwateng has star-level upside, it's certainly reasonable to think that he can be a solid right-back for years to come. Getting young fullbacks of that caliber for cheap represents massive value for the club, especially for mid-level Premier League clubs in the market for right-backs who are trying to find value in the transfer market while the rest of Europe uses them as an ATM machine. For clubs in Europe, Kwateng represents an opportunity to secure an affordable first XI caliber fullback and reap the rewards in the future.

When you call a transfer the "Signing of the Summer" and then the player proceeds to score 32 league goals and 10 Champions League goals in a season, it's fair to say you can be happy with your work. Hell, I even mocked up a picture of Mo Salah in a Liverpool tracksuit for the accompanying artwork. I was high on this guy and Salah chipped in on his end of the deal. Good lad.

This season had been progressing very well too, at least until recently. He has recorded 20 goals in the league and Champions League (albeit with four penalties), it's just that while last season saw an overwhelming overperformance--StatsBomb model had him at 31 non-penalty goals from about 20 expected-- this season he's basically matched expectation. As such, there is a view in the darkest corners of the fan world that perhaps he's been a bit disappointing. In general this would be wrong. But there is no doubt that specifically recently, his contribution to scoring both in expected terms and in reality has somewhat slowed down. He has only one goal and one assist in his last ten club matches, and he's been out there: he has only been substituted once. As I discussed last week, in the aggregate, all this might not matter, since Liverpool's dynamo front three are scoring at a rate commensurate with what came before, it's just Sadio Mané has received the goodwill of the footballing gods this season, and his goalscoring has matched that of Salah. Two forwards, 20 goals each.

Let's have a look at Salah from a data perspective and see if we can identify any aspects of his game that have changed.

Here are his Premier League shot maps year to year (prior to the Fulham game):

To get one thing out of the way; we're not being ignorant to the slightly different position he's played at times this season, more central. The general shape of his shot map hasn't really changed, there's still a skew to his most usual right sided starting position. I've highlighted some segments that I think are of note though, so let's work through them:

1. Salah's opposite side saw him finish at a fantastic rate last season, by my reckoning he converted nine goals from around 27 shots in that zone left of the penalty spot. So he had a decent volume there and finished at a very high rate. This season he simply hasn't gained shots over on that side at anything like the same rate. He has a couple of goals in there, but despite being nominally more central at times, it hasn't translated into shots or goals.

2. This zone fascinates me because it's the zone I envisage Salah operating in; cutting in from the right, perhaps beating a defender or creating space for a shot, nicely faced up in front of the keeper. Another nine or so of his goals last season came from this area, whereas this season he's barely even shooting in there. He has one goal from that zone but there's a huge gap where last season shots existed, and this season they just don't. If there is one specific aspect in which the league as a whole may have become somewhat accustomed to Salah's shooting tendencies, this might be it, the Robben zone. Whatever you do, don't let him onto his left foot in that area, if you can help it.

3. This feeds into a smaller factor which I think is borne out in zone three. If Salah is diverted away from that golden shooting spot, where does he go? That little cluster of shots derived from throughballs in there feels like the resulting aspect of Salah having had his shooting angle closed off, before ending up with a tight finish with his right foot further in. Even right footers struggle to finish from these kind of zones, so for Salah to struggle there with his off foot, would be quite normal.

Slowing down is normal, and was always likely, but we have a window there into where shooting locations are actually different.

Here's an simple experimental viz to identify where players move to generate their own shots. It shows the position in which they received the ball (start of the line) and the resulting shot location as well as a footed indicator for the shot. It's important to recognise that the actual movement of the player may or may not be in a straight line (as represented), so what we're mainly interested in are the starting and finishing locations. There's a cut off of 3 metres so as not to overload the visualisation and also to highlight events in which the player has made a significant move, be it a dribble or a carry, between receiving or recovering the ball and shooting it.

Now some of this will be in the eye of the beholder, but it looks to me that Salah was more proficient at generating shots from his right sided starting position, these kind of 5 to 10 yard snappy bursts in a North West direction during 2017-18, while this season, has tended to move inside or take it down towards the touchline. This chimes with what we saw earlier regarding overall location of shots too. He's perhaps starting his shooting moves in that back quarter of the penalty box less frequently too.

Let's try and segment the season to see what's changing elsewhere:

Usefully Salah has appeared in every one of Liverpool's games this season, so we can slice up his season into tidy ten game segments (data is from prior to the Fulham game, he has one substitute appearance in there too). Ten games is probably about as small as you might want to slice this for analysis purposes, and the schedule is fairly balanced through here too (3/3/2 games vs top 6 rivals) but we can see significant differences.

First ten games: High shot rate, over four per game (same as last season) feeding into high xG (nearly 0.6 per 90) and solid but unspectacular xG assisted (0.26 per 90).

Next ten games: Shot rate has come down by 1.5 per game to 2.6, and xG has followed (0.37) however he's taken some slack in creativity (0.40 xG Assisted per 90)

Last ten games: Tough times. Shots moved closer to three per game, but xG is down again (0.31 per 90) powered by a big drop off in xG per shot (0.14 in both prior segments, 0.10 in this one) and the xG assisted has gone AWOL (0.14 per 90).

Segmented shot maps bring out that xG per shot decline clearly:

First ten games: few too many blocked shots from range, nice xG boost from a bunch of shots deep in the six yard box.

Next ten games: where did all the blocks go? Really quite a nice mix of shots, then that odd little cluster in a bit of a no man's zone outside the edge of the six yard box.

Last ten games: I don't like all these wide shots from range. It's hard to score from out there, even with an open look at goal. Not saying it's easy to achieve but Salah somehow needs to work to shift these 5 yards closer to the centre. Look at the lack of shots closer in than the penalty spot and within the width of the six yard box.

It's worth reframing this whole discussion around expectation too. Without last season, this season would look like an excellent return for a new wide forward. Mané is another player who has had stick at times, entirely unfairly when factored against his general contribution as a non-traditional forward rather than a typical goal-getter. And the team itself is having one of the great seasons of the Premier League era, yet amazingly remain in a title race. I had a look at Salah's passing high up the pitch, but could see little difference season to season in how he interacts with those around him, or how he progresses the ball. He will always turn the ball over quite frequently, it's a trait related to his tendency to try and carve out his own chances through ball carrying, but he is a good passer in dangerous areas (ninth in the league for open play passes into the box).

Salah is going through his first major quiet period as a Liverpool player. It's to his credit that it's taken the best part of two seasons before he has reached this point. One concern could be around tiredness. He played a full season last year then got injured in the Champions League final and rushed back to the World Cup then has been nearly ever present again in 2018-19. The recent drift towards wider and rangier shots is something to keep abreast of moving forward but luckily, we well know that Liverpool have some of the smartest guys around working on analysis, so one would presume it's in hand. And spending time with the video will shed further light on the story too.

It's tough for Mo. He had a season which lit up like Messi, and as we saw again this past weekend, nobody is a Messi but Messi. Salah will shin one in soon enough and people will forget about this blip. The battle between defenders desperately trying to shift him onto his right foot will rage on, no doubt for years to come. How well he adapts to that will be fascinating to follow.

---

@jair1970

Tomás Lanzini was relaxing on La Cala beach in Benalmádena, Málaga, soaking in the sun, staring out across the Mediterranean, when the call came through from his younger brother Manuel. It was 8th June 2018, six days before the start of the World Cup, and his brother bore bad news. He had ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee during an Argentina training session in Barcelona. He was out of the tournament.

As soon as the call ended, Tomás booked a flight to Barcelona. Not just because that’s what brothers do, but because he knew he could be of genuine, practical assistance. Manuel Lanzini is neither the only professional footballer in the Lanzini family nor the only one to have suffered that injury. Tomás, 15 months his senior, a forward most cherished for his spell at Ñublense in Chile, was in the latter stages of his own recovery from his second ACL rupture when Lanzini called.

“The injury that Manuel suffered, I had already suffered twice,” Tomás told StatsBomb. “Everything I learned during those recovery processes helped me help Manu through the process, let him know what to expect along the way. It is a difficult injury, and a long recovery process that demands a lot from you both physically and mentally, but I knew that with patience, calmness and above all, a lot of hard work, it is possible to get through it.”

Tomás was there by Lanzini’s side after he was operated on in Barcelona by the renowned surgeon, Dr. Ramón Cugat, and during the early days of his recovery. He took him to Málaga to continue the process, and then offered support and encouragement from afar once Lanzini returned to London to begin working directly with the medical team at West Ham and gradually closed in on a return he could never be certain was going to come.

“It is difficult to know if everything is going well,” Tomás explained. “In truth, you only really feel good once you get back to training out on the pitch, playing football and touching the ball without pain or other problems. That is the reality. There are months before in which you start to doubt yourself, when you are afraid. In those moments, maintaining faith in yourself and the work you are doing is very important. If you can maintain faith in those moments that is half the battle won.”

Lanzini did, and few were as delighted as Tomás to see him step back out onto the pitch for the first time during the final quarter-hour of West Ham’s 3-1 win at home to Fulham on 22nd February. Few, apart perhaps from coach Manuel Pellegrini. The Chilean is used to working with talented playmakers. From Juan Riquelme to Robert Pires, Isco to Santi Cazorla, David Silva to Yaya Toure, he’s coached some of the best. But at West Ham, he has lacked a consistent figure capable of regulating the tempo, progressing the ball forward and providing a creative touch in the final third.

In a recent interview with The Independent, Pellegrini bemoaned the lack of availability of the players in his squad he considers playmakers: Lanzini, Samir Nasri, Jack Wilshere and Andriy Yarmolenko. Whether or not you agree with his classification -- or indeed, the wisdom of investing in the salaries of players with injury histories as extensive as those of Nasri and Wilshere -- that last-mentioned trio had combined for just 935 minutes of action prior to Lanzini’s return against Fulham -- just 40% of the available game-time. No wonder he is glad to have Lanzini back.

“[He is the perfect player for us], not only in the way I like to play football,” Pellegrini said recently. “I think Manuel Lanzini for every manager would be a player that makes a difference.” The respect is mutual. “The style of play and the methodology of Pellegrini very much suits my brother,” Tómas explained. “A coach like Pellegrini is going to be great for his game.”

Even last season under the stodgy approach of Pellegrini’s predecessor David Moyes, Lanzini proved effective. He was both West Ham’s primary ball progressor, leading the team in deep progressions and passes into the box per 90, and their primary creator, likewise topping the charts in terms of xG assisted, key passes and set-piece xG assisted. All of that while completing a team-best 83% of his passes, making him one of only 16 players in the Premier League last season to combine at least six deep progressions and one key pass with a completion rate of 80% or higher. His scoring contribution (goals and assists) rate of 0.45 per 90 bettered his output during his previous two seasons in England.

A glimpse of what he will provide to the side was given in his first start since his return, a 2-0 home win over Newcastle on Saturday. From the opening minute, he drifted in search of the ball, provoking short combinations and seeking to manoeuvre his team forward.

 

 

By the end of the game, he had touched the ball more often (162 times) than any other player. He wasn’t directly involved in the creation of any chances, but he helped link things together and provided purpose and tempo to West Ham’s play. “You see Manu... he looked really good tonight,” Mark Noble, one of Lanzini’s closest friends at the club, told Sky Sports. “He’s such a fantastic player, and I think when we get him back to full fitness and we’ve got him and Felipe [Anderson]...”

There were certainly signs of an aesthetically pleasing and potentially fruitful partnership between Lanzini and Anderson. They exchanged passes more often (31 times) than any other pair of players, and made good territory with some of their cuter combinations.

 

 

In the absence of a central playmaker, Anderson has done much of the work expected of that role this season, carrying and passing the ball forward, creating opportunities for teammates. Perhaps with Lanzini alongside him to take on some of the load, he can be even more productive further up the pitch during the club’s run-in.

Lanzini is clearly not going to be a panacea for all the minor problems that combine to leave West Ham with the worst underlying statistics of any of the teams now in with a realistic shot at claiming seventh in the table and the European spot that might come with it. But in a congested race in which inconsistency has been a problem for all, his return certainly won’t hurt their chances of getting the results they need down the final stretch to maybe just sneak ahead of the competition.

The 26-year-old will also have a return to the international stage on his mind. It bears remembering that not only did he make the World Cup squad last summer, just a year removed from his international debut, but he was being spoken of as the ideal foil for Lionel Messi, the missing link that would bring everything together. Instead, he watched on from his Barcelona hospital bed as Argentina spluttered to a round-of-16 exit. Obviously, nothing can replace that lost opportunity, but if he could win a place in the squad for this summer’s Copa América, it would represent the first step towards getting another chance at Qatar 2022.

“It is the dream of every footballer to experience a World Cup, and he was on the verge of doing it, so it was very hard at the time,” Tomás recalled. “But later we realised that he still has time to return and be part of another one. Now that he has recovered, I don’t have any doubt that he will be there in Qatar.”

Header image courtesy of the Press Association

David Neres was one of the most conflicting prospects I’ve come across over the past couple of years. His ability to create goals for himself or others last season (25 combined goals an assists in less than 3000 Eredivisie minutes for a 20 year old was super impressive), along with credible shot contribution rates, made his productivity stand out in a very positive light. Even accounting for the Eredivisie being weird, and Ajax having a huge talent advantage within it, Neres passed the type of statistical benchmarks that you would hope for from a young attacker with flying colors.

But after watching film of Neres, I got scared by some of the flaws in his game, to the point that I rated Malcom as the better prospect t the time. I valued his elite athleticism and functional playmaking more than Neres’ elite coordination on-ball. Now it’s interesting to look back at that comparison 13 months later. That was probably close to the peak of where Malcom was as a young prospect, and he’s effectively lost an entire season of development at Barcelona. It’s tough to say whether this lost season will have a major effect on Malcom’s overall trajectory as a prospect, or if he’ll get a move to a club that he can get actual game time and this is just a bump on the road.

Neres hasn’t faced that same issue, despite Ajax's the acquisition of Dusan Tadic over the summer from Southampton cutting into available game time at the attacking positions. Instead of playing over 3000 minutes in both the Eredivisie and European competition like he did last season, Neres will probably end up playing closer to 2500 minutes, which is still not an insignificant number given that precocious young talents need game time to grow. Just like last season, he’s producing at a level that is comparable with almost anyone near his age.

What’s been interesting with Neres this season has been the degree of freedom with his positioning. He’s featured a lot in the left halfspace when play has progressed into the final third, where he's trying to strike up combination plays. From there, he can make runs into the box through either the wide left channel or by going through the middle of the box. If he's in the right halfspace, there's the chance for him to try and cut into the middle and either pass it to someone dangerous with his quality touch on passes or recycle the ball to a nearby teammate. While he wasn't quite restricted to only being an inverted winger from the right side last season, his freer role this season has probably helped in attempting to destabilize the opposition with his positioning.

One aspect of Neres's game that has become more apparent over the last year is his off-ball speed and the type of damage he can do with it. Neres’ ability to sense danger behind the backline is strong and he’s constantly on his toes looking to receive passes in space. His off-ball speed is elite, and given that many of his runs originate from the halfspace, it gives him a greater ability to be a threat for long passes. Given that he's playing on a squad that features high caliber passers, particularly Hakim Ziyech and his penchant for attempting high value passes with regularity, Neres is in the perfect environment to leverage his speed.

As it was last season, Neres's biggest appeal is that he has the type of coordination on-ball that you see from very few attacking talents. He's able to thread a pass between defenders and get the ball into dangerous spots with regularity. One can nitpick and say he's largely doing this against Eredivisie competition, but I'm pretty confident he'll be above average with his forward passing and overall chance creation even though the majority of them come from his left foot. Neres is one of those young players who you don't have to worry about reigning in shot selection or wondering whether he'll waste possessions settling for low quality shots. He has about as clean a shot map as one could hope for from a young talent, and he provides value in that respect because it's not too often that you find 18-21 year old attackers who take shots at an average expected goal per shot value of 0.16. His judicious shot selection is a byproduct of a couple of things: he plays on one of the two major clubs in the Netherlands and that can skew numbers in a positive manner for players. Also, he is very hesitant to taking shots with his right foot so you end up cutting out potential shots from cutting inwards off the left wing, the type of shot that is a staple of wide attacking talents. That reluctance to use his right foot is a key trait with Neres. It's not breaking ground to suggest that players are more likely to favor one foot than the other, and it's rare to find players like Ousmane Dembele who bring legitimate value by being both confident as a two-footed player and actually having the results to back it up (Justin Kluivert is an example of someone that has the confidence but more erratic results). But Neres is an extreme case and closer to being an outlier type in terms of dependence on his favored foot, even with the glimpses of decent right footed passes that you'll see from him. This isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world because he's got such a quality left foot to help compensate, but you'll see this flare up every now and then in a stark manner. If there's one play that crystallizes both the good and bad with Neres as a young talent, it would be this one. The good is that there are a lot of players who would receive the ball in this position and then turn and take a speculative shot, which is a waste of a possession. The bad part is that there's an opportunity to carry the ball into the right side of the box for perhaps an individual shooting chance or a cutback for a teammate, the latter being a somewhat decent possibility because the team has a man advantage in the box. Someone who was a higher caliber athlete would've bet on himself to beat his man off the dribble and get to his spot. Given that he's going up against Eredivisie defenses, which aren't exactly renown for being stout, these instances help reinforce the notion that Neres will have trouble with his athleticism on-ball outside of the Ajax cocoon. To a large extent, the conflicting feelings that I had a year ago with David Neres still persist when trying to think of his potential ceiling outcomes. You want to fall in love with him as a player because of parts of his skillset. He is an elite athlete off-ball and combines that with good timing for his runs, and this could be an x-factor for him being a huge success at his next club if utilized properly. I think he has good spatial awareness and is able to handle himself well during combination. Combine all that with very high level touch on his passing, and you've already covered a lot of what teams would want in a young wide player. And yet while he's generally good as a dribbler along with having very good shiftiness, another season has shown Neres to be overwhelmed at times when isolated against even mediocre defenders, along with being almost entirely dependent on his left foot. The good outweighs the bad with Neres and in a optimal environment, he could be a big time star, but clubs that are scouting him can't simply think of him as someone with such an overwhelming skillset that he'll be a unambiguous success in many situations. It's generally acknowledged that going to the right club is important for the developmental paths of young talents. With Neres, it's going to be especially important for him to find the perfect mix of squad and system fit given what he can and can't do. The good thing with Neres playing on Ajax and the team's success in Europe this season is that the worst club you could realistically expect for him to go to in the future would be ones who are on the outside looking in for Champions League spots (Arsenal being an example), but those clubs would have to ably replicate the setup Ajax have with their collective passing as a team to justify the high price tag that will come with a future Neres transfer. It's an interesting thought exercise to try and make player comparisons with Neres to visualize how he might fare outside of Ajax. Riyad Mahrez is an example of someone who like Neres has amazing technique with his left foot and broadly wouldn't be considered an overwhelming athlete, but along with having greater spontaneity in his dribbling, he's also better with right foot. Mahrez, during his absolute peak in 2015-16, was ruining defenders off the dribble and we've not seen that with Neres yet. Perhaps current day Erik Lamela (without the defensive value) is a better representation of how Neres is more likely to profile: being able to be an upper tier xG contributor without necessarily being an elite off the dribble threat (in the case of Lamela, that's more due to past injuries). Whoever ends up being David Neres' next club after Ajax, whether that transfer occurs next summer or beyond that, will have to juggle all the factors mentioned previously along with even further extensive scouting before deciding on whether they're confident on him being a future star. Seeing as he's tied down to a contract until 2022 with Champions League money coming in this season for Ajax (not to mention a big fat Frenkie De Jong transfer fee), it would stand to reason that Neres' future fee will not come cheap. I am on the more skeptical end of the spectrum when it comes to Neres, and while I don't suspect he'll be a bust in a tougher league, I am more confident in Steven Bergwijn being a star talent outside the Eredivisie than I am with Neres. This could end up being entirely off the mark and Neres ends up being a stud, but he's the type of young Eredivisie talent where it's fair to be more skeptical of despite the gaudy statistical profile.

What can data analytics tell us about Everton’s midfield? Everton have had a strange season, starting brightly but fading away. The rolling xG average tells the story with a sharp recent decrease in attacking productivity coupled with a large increase in the quality of chances against. In almost every game this season Everton have lined up in a nominal 4-2-3-1 formation. The deeper two players have usually been Idrissa Gana Gueye and Andre Gomes. Ahead has been a left sided player, usually Bernard, a central player in Gylfi Sigurdsson and Theo Walcott on the right. Richarlison has often been the striker. In a 4-2-3-1 the deeper two players usually take responsibility for protecting the defence and feeding the ball to the attacking midfield and striker ahead of them. If we look at the player radars we can see that Gueye shows up very well on defensive covering stats, winning the ball back at league leading levels. Gomes also shows signs of being able to carry the ball forwards maintaining a league average output for a central midfielder, coupled with above average dribbling stats. Drilling further into the Statsbomb dataset gives us more information. There are 111 midfielders who have played over 1000 minutes of first team football this season.  To ensure a fair comparison we will compare Gueye and Gomes only with players described as midfielders, and Bernard, Sigurdsson and Walcott with attacking midfielders and wingers. There are 69 midfielders in our comparison group for Gueye and Gomes, for each of them we will provide a ranking from within that group of players: Open play expected assists per 90 rank: Gueye: 64/69 Gomes: 49/69   Open play passes per 90 rank: Gueye: 31/69 Gomes: 26/69   Opposition final third open play passes per 90 rank: Gueye: 44/69 Gomes: 37/69   These ranking results make sense, especially for two deep midfielders in a 4-2-3-1 formation. Everton are generating a reasonable volume of passes, but at low expected assist quality as those passes are taking place a long way from the opposition goal. Similarly ranked players, on these metrics, include Rueben Neves and Georginio Wijnaldum. The Everton pair are unlikely to be playing passes of the same quality but by way of showing where they are positioned on the pitch, and the type of passes they make, it seems reasonable. So how do the attacking midfield trio profile?   This time the comparison group contains 42 players of attacking midfielders and wingers. Open play expected assists per 90 rank: Bernard: 15/42 Sigurdsson: 25/42 Walcott: 26/42   Open play passes per 90 rank: Bernard: 24/42 Sigurdsson: 37/42 Walcott: 40/42   Opposition final third open play passes per 90 rank: Bernard 27/42 Sigurdsson 34/42 Walcott 37/42   A clear pattern emerges. Everton are extremely direct in attack, particularly Walcott and Sigurdsson, with very few interchanges between the players. When a player gets the ball they go directly for goal or try to play another player in, This is not a group concerned with exchanging passes or recycling possession. In fact we can see this by looking where they each rank among the 42 other attacking midfielders in the proportion of forward passes in the final third: Bernard: 15/42 Sigurdsson: 1/42 Walcott: 13/42   Sigurdsson is a particularly extreme example, topping the comparison chart for the proportion of passes that go forwards when in the final third but also being almost bottom for the volume. In summary he just doesn’t get involved in traditional midfield build up at all. And neither does Theo Walcott or Bernard. The question is whether this is a deliberate tactical ploy, or simply a case of incompatible players failing to link up. If we compare Everton with Wolverhampton Wanderers we see similar numbers in build up play, with Neves and Moutinho profiling similarly to Gomes and Gana. However when the 32 outfield strikers with over 1000 minutes on the pitch are sorted by expected open play assists per 90 minutes Raul Jimenez (3rd) and Diogo Jota (7th) appear a long way before Calvert-Lewin (27th), Cenk Tosun (28th) and Richarlison (31st). If neither the strikers, nor the midfielders are generating high quality chances for each other then you need to consider if the tactical approach is working. So, what exactly is Marco Silva’s tactical approach? He made his name through playing a counter-attacking 4-3-3 formation. It was said of his Olympiakos side that they were so good on the break that they were more dangerous out of possession than in. At Everton, this style of football is yet to click. Playing a 4-2-3-1 without any build up play from the three attacking midfielders, the style often more resembles a 4-2-4, with the only sustained threat coming from the left back where Lucas Digne  tops the Everton attacking chart in terms of expected assists. Given the lack of threat from the front four, and the lack of interchange between them, perhaps the best option would be to move one of the attackers back into a standard midfield position and revert to a 4-3-3. The question is; whom? And if the answer is changing formation and dropping an expensive player is the club brave enough to make that decision? Can the team overcome a heavy dose of sunk cost fallacy embodied in the person of Gylfi Siggurdson and make smart, forward looking decisions? The sunk cost fallacy explains that It is painful to accept having wasted money. This pain impedes your ability to make logical decisions. Having invested so much money in Gylfi Sigurdsson it becomes almost impossible for a manager to not play him. And yet the logical change to make to Everton’s line up is moving from a 4-2-3-1 (that actually resembles a 4-2-4) to a 4-3-3. And the logical player to replace is the player currently in the number 10 role who does not contribute to the build up play. Gylfi Sigurdsson. Even without purchasing players Everton’s squad contains central midfield options of Nikola Vlasic, Kieran Dowell, Tom Davies, Morgan Schneiderlin, James McCarthy, Mo Besic, Joe WIlliams, Beni Baningime, and Callum Connolly. With Richarlison, Cenk Tosun, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Yannick Bolasie, Henry Onyekuru, Kevin Mirallas, and Ademola Lookman fighting for a place in the front three along with Walcott and Bernard. Could Everton control games better, and play better on the break with an additional midfielder offering defensive cover and build up passing? Would a front three of, for example, Bernard, Richarlison and Lookman offer the pace and width in attack Marco Silva made his name coaching? Or could Everton change their style of play and encourage more interchange in attack, and less directness? Bernard showed at Shakhtar Donetsk he can play in a high possession 4-2-3-1, with Walcott and Sigurdsson also having had success at Arsenal and Swansea in teams known for patient build up. There are many questions for Marco Silva to find an answer to by the end of the season. He has options within his - huge - squad. First, however, he’ll have to decide to try something different, and that means accepting that the system he’s used his whole career isn’t working on the pitch at Goodison.

It's fair to say that Lionel Messi remains the best player in the world. This past weekend, he contrived to put together a fascinating and unique performance. Barcelona eked a 1-0 win out against Real Valladolid, with one goal a small return from twenty shots, two of which were Messi penalties. Barcelona regularly take twenty or more shots, and this was the eighth time they've done it in La Liga this season. What was unusual was Messi's involvement. Of 20 shots, he took 12 of them and laid on the key pass for 7 others. It's been widely reported that he was involved in all 20, but that's simply not true as late in second half stoppage time Philippe Coutinho ruined everything by propelling a non-Messi influenced ball high into the stands, and a shot's a shot, so that was that. But that doesn't change the fundamental measurement of the accomplishment. Here at StatsBomb Towers, we dusted off the microfilm and took a look through the history to find any kind of equivalent game. My initial feeling was that this was a scarce performance; sure, players take double digit shots in a game and there are many games on record with over 30 shots for a team and a forward loading up double digit shots. The true rarity of this accomplishment is for a player to be so singularly involved in a team's attack. It would make more sense if it was say, an aging Argentina side desperately lumbering against Iceland in the 2018 World Cup (Messi shot 11 times and logged 3 key passes that day, but that was just 50% of 28 total shots), but for a team like Barcelona, to funnel everything through their talisman felt unusual. And it was. To be directly involved in 95% of a team's shots is as extremely rare, especially with any significant volume of team shots. To be involved in all but one of 20 shots is off the charts. Just hasn't happened.

  There are a bunch of matches where a player had an involvement in all a team's shots but they're in games where the team had 10 of fewer attempts. You won't be impressed if I tell you Solly March accounted for all of Brighton's six attempts against Chelsea on the 16th of December 2018 with four shots and two key passes. You won't be impressed at all. Go above 12 shots and already there are no cases where players are involved in all but one of their team's shots. All but two shots? Yes, and WE HAVE A CONTENDER: Kylian Mbappé for PSG against Lyon last October had nine shots, three key passes for a total of 12 out of 14 shots. Nice! Even better, the same day as the aforementioned "Solly March Game", our man Messi put up seven shots and seven key passes in a 16 shot, 5-0 Barcelona win over Levante; 14 of 16! So close, and enough to rank second! Final scores on the doors, a big 1-2 for Messi with the young pretender in third. That's some fun stats. "I watched the game, stats man, he was not great, you're getting excited about nothing." Over on twitter @thedummyrun has done a nice job evaluating the varied takes on Messi's performance, from stats to eye test and everything in between and made the point that Messi gave the ball away a lot during the game. And that is valid. Teams need to be efficient in how they balance and use their attacks, regardless of how good their star player is. Barcelona have had many successes throughout Messi's career but rarely has he been the entire focal point of their attack in games, he's usually been ably supported by other world stars. It shouldn't be falling on him to do it all. As such, the wider perspective here is interesting to ponder. Using some rudimentary usage numbers, Messi at 20% is behind only Adnan Januzaj in this season's La Liga (~21%). That means 20% of Barcelona's possessions finish with him but with an excellent 33% of them involving a shot or a key pass to finish off. Now Januzaj is talented but wasteful, Messi is not. But also 20% is super high for anyone (the better question here could well be "why you no pass, Adnan?") and to see so much play channeling through Messi, even though he's Lionel Messi, poses questions around the team's general efficiency. It's also a rate that has risen from 19% last season. We have these outlier games that show isolated cases of more play channeling through him, but it may well be a trend. So what's going on? It probably isn't a preferable way for Barcelona to play even allowing for Messi's undeniable class. The attacking blend that Barcelona can now field still feels that it is adapting to a post-Neymar world. Where are other possessions ending? Ousmane Dembélé is responsible for 17% of them, again up from 16% last season. More and more of Barcelona's play is channeling through these two players and the blend of an aging Luis Suárez, now less the dervish-like player they signed and more of a scorer means there is less of a natural fluidity in their front line. I remain sad that peak Suárez was pushed to the head of the MSN triumvirate and Barcelona lost the all round energetic madness of a do-it-all forward, because amazingly, they already had two better players for the creative scoring roles in behind. Now, fresh from a mis-sorted column on an all seasons scouting list, Kevin Prince-Boateng has checked in as an option. Elsewhere, it's tricky: Malcom, Dembélé and Coutinho have all arrived for big money and for various reasons it seems the Barcelona front three isn't quite picking itself these days, and Messi may well feel an added responsibility to deliver. It's important to note though, beyond questions about how Barcelona are running their attack, from a statistical perspective, Messi is not declining. His contribution to goals--both expected and actual--remains absolute top tier. If you're even trying to be critical, the only angle to come at is that perhaps he's not as good as his own younger self. At 31 he remains a unique talent and as we've seen here he's still setting (non-longevity related, they'll come) statistical benchmarks too. Not bad.

There’s been a general trend in football over the past few years towards greater efficiency with shot locations at the expense of overall shot volume. Compared to the late 2000s and even the early 2010s, teams are considerably more judicious about what constitutes a good shot and not settling for a heavy amount of low quality shots during possession play. This is especially true when looking at football at the highest level, where the migration of talent has become so pronounced that teams can structure their attack to constantly hunt for good shots and minimize the effects of variance. This isn’t to say that European football has become totally monotonous (a criticism that’s been recently levied at other sports like the NBA and NFL), but there's more awareness around not wasting possessions by settling for sub-optimal shots.

That’s what makes Federico Chiesa an interesting test case for where football is heading. It’s undeniable that he’s incredibly talented, even though his scoring contribution rate of 0.30 is on the lower end of highly rated young attackers. Whether using traditional shot metrics (shots and key passes) or using expected goal contribution, Chiesa has been producing at a high enough level that it’s no surprise that bigger clubs will heavily consider acquiring his signature during the summer, especially given his age.

Chiesa’s xG per shot is where things get interesting, and the reason why he’s an intriguing data point. The league average for xG per shot among wingers and attacking midfielders is at 10% in Serie A, so Chiesa’s rate of 7% is meaningfully below the league average. One could argue that this is merely a reflection for the environment he’s in, but that doesn’t really pass the smell test as Fiorentina are middle of the pack in both xG per shot and average shot distance in Serie A. Given his low shot quality and the volume of his shooting, this paints the picture of Chiesa as something of a wild shot taker.

If Fiorentina, a notable Serie A club but certainly not a major European force, decide to cash in, a player with Chiesa's upside would command serious money both as a transfer fee and then a long term contract. Before doing that, clubs should worry about his scalability and how Chiesa would function as a smaller cog at a larger club. This was something flagged when discussing Nicolas Pepe earlier in the season. It’s not impossible to think that Chiesa could become an all-encompassing force at a larger club if he develops on a certain path, but the odds of that happening are probably on the lower end. Assuming he ends up as more of a supporting artist who takes closer to three shots per 90 mins, would his shot locations bump up in a meaningful manner or would he still have his xG per shot still hover around 7.5–8%?

This isn’t to say that taking shots from outside the box as a whole is necessarily a bad thing. Players who have shown the ability to score from distance (Coutinho, Christian Eriksen, Gareth Bale during his peak years) should be given a bit more leeway to take longer range shots. I’m sympathetic to the notion that within reason, taking shots from distance can help with the diversity of a team’s attacking approach. There are also times where it’s clear that the possession isn’t going anywhere and taking a 3–4% shot is the best outcome at play. But Chiesa settles for long range shots too often for someone that isn’t an outlier as a long distance shooter. He’ll load up for shots outside the box when they’re 1–2 other teammates who present themselves as options for potentially higher quality shots.

In general, Chiesa’s decision making could be described as somewhat erratic. That’s not necessarily an awful thing. Young attackers in the 18–21 year old age bracket aren’t fully formed players, so it’s expected that there’s some irrationality in the way they operate as they’re gaining more game experience under their belt. Chiesa’s insistence on taking long shots and doing it at such a high volume is where it gets to the point that he’s starting to leave stuff off the table for the team. It’s clear that if anything hinders Chiesa from being a top tier talent in the future, it would be in the decision making department.

The upside with Chiesa is obvious: he’s a quality athlete who’s able to cover ground with effortless strides. There’s extra value to be had as an attacking player who could bring the ball from deeper areas and help progress the team during counter attacks, and Chiesa is able to do that. Once he kicks it up to a higher gear with his speed, it’s very hard to catch him and the opposition is left with having to use dark arts mischief to slow the play down. It will be interesting to see just how much this aspect of Chiesa’s skillset would transition if he played on a major club, but he’s a legit threat as a counter attacking outlet.

In addition to his athleticism, Chiesa has been able to create chances during semi-transition opportunities when there’s been a turnover. His decision-making during these instances has probably been better than when he’s playing against a more set defense. He can switch play with both feet if he senses that there’s an open teammate on the opposite side, or attempt to thread the needle in between defenders to varying degrees of success. That he displays more nuance and overall awareness during chaotic situations is encouraging, although he is still prone to jacking up shots at inopportune times during transition.

Against opposition that are more set, Chiesa can still show explosion off the dribble. On the left, he’s almost effortless in gliding into the middle of the pitch when he's insistent on shooting from distance. On the right side he has enough athleticism that he can push the ball to a certain spot and get it before the opponent does, something that a player like Oussama Idrissi in the Eredivisie has had issues with himself. Because of that athleticism, he’s able to function as a right winger on his dominant right foot and be threatening as a playmaker once he gets into the penalty box, trying to find teammates for cutback opportunities.

Chiesa’s positioning and off-ball movements are unorthodox in some ways. While nominally listed as a right winger, he’ll often take up position in numerous other areas of the pitch, whether it be as an inverted winger on the left side or occupying central areas. It’s not uncommon to see Chiesa in between the center-backs trying to punish space behind the backline. It’s this diversity of positioning and movement that helps trigger his abilities as a threat during counter attacks, particularly if his starting position is from the halfspace or middle. Whether he'll be given the same freedom at a bigger club to be all over the place on the pitch is a legitimate question, but there's enough to think that he should be able to function in multiple roles whether as a more traditional right sided player or something different.

Given what's already been described, just how good of a young talent is Federico Chiesa? If you took out the concerns with his shot volume + locations, it's not hard to find things to like with his game. He's a very fluid athlete both on and off ball, he's shown a level of competence with his playmaking when the defense is unsettled, and his positioning is diverse enough that he could perform in a number of roles. But the shooting concerns are legit, especially because he's not an amazing playmaker but rather a solid one so he's not making up the value lost with his shooting (He's not a player like Hakim Ziyech, the preeminent example of someone who has sub-optimal shooting tendencies but makes up for it with elite playmaking). Unless Chiesa becomes a dominant winger at a bigger club (not impossible), he's going to have to scale down his shot volume and exhibit better discipline with his locations, and it's fair to wonder whether that'll actually happen. There's an interesting comparison that could be made on some level between Federico Chiesa and Malcom during his breakout season last year. They both played on teams that during good seasons would normally challenge for Europa League spots in their respective leagues, and each were very good, maybe even great, athletes in their own right. What helped Malcom generate buzz last season was his ability to act as an outlet during counter attacks and drive play forward, all the while possessing enough coordination and awareness to hit teammates when they were making runs into the penalty box. That is something that Chiesa has been able to do at similar levels. The obvious difference between the two players is that Chiesa's shot volume vastly outstrips Malcom's along with a greater propensity to be in the box. Malcom serves as a bit of a cautionary tale for Chiesa. While Malcom was good enough that bigger clubs around Europe were wise to think hard about acquiring him last summer, there was nothing to suggest that he was ready make the leap to a superclub like Barcelona and get consistent game time, and now it looks like he's going to lose an entire year of development as a result. Young talents in general need ample minutes for their development, and that especially applies to prominent youngsters like Malcom or Ruben Loftus-Cheek as another example. Chiesa would be best off finding a CL level side that he could feel reasonably confident in getting at least 1500 league minutes in a season. There have been reports that Chiesa's future transfer fee will be upwards of £60m, which would be a rather staggering amount for a young player that's a net positive contributor but not necessarily one that's shown to be an unambiguous star talent. Paying close to that fee as a club would be betting that there's a fully realized version waiting to come to the surface, that his shot selection will get better over time. Everton's acquisition of Richarlison last summer was an example of a club spending a premium on a young talent that they judged to be a future star, and to this point that transfer looks to be more of a mixed bag than an undeniable success. While Chiesa is perhaps better than Richarlison, spending £60m or more on him would come with similar downside risk. The outline of a star player is there with Federico Chiesa, whether that turns into something more substantive is anyone's guess.   Header image courtesy of the Press Association

When Louis Lancaster first set eyes on Jadon Sancho, he knew he had been given a special talent to work with. Sancho had just been promoted a year above his age group into Lancaster’s Watford Under-15 side, and it quickly became clear that he was more than ready for the challenge. The focus shifted on to how to make the most of his obvious ability. “There are a lot of players who play the game of football but don’t actually contribute,” Lancaster, recently named the new head coach of the Taiwan national team, told StatsBomb. “We sat down and thought: how can you contribute? It’s easy with a player of his qualities: it’s goals, assists, and playing forwards. There are two types of possession. There is possession for possession’s sake, which I get, sometimes you need it, but there is also a style of possession that can hurt the opposition, where you’re breaking lines and eliminating players from the game. That was what we stuck to: score, create, purposeful possession.” It was a lesson that Sancho quite clearly took on board. At just 18 years old, he is already one of the key attacking contributors to the Borussia Dortmund side that currently leads the way in the Bundesliga. He has provided a goal or assist for every 90 minutes he’s been on the pitch, and he leads the team in successful dribbles and passes into the area per 90. It is an impressively well-rounded contribution, but it is all built around his outstanding ball control and dribbling ability. Lancaster has a theory he picked up from a table tennis coach about the best performers in that sport. He was told that the top 200 in the world is filled with players who are seven out of 10 across the board, but that it is only those who have at least one outstanding attribute, even if they are slightly below average in other areas, who populate the top 10. The rest of their game coalesces around that quality. It feels that way with Sancho. With 4.17 successful dribbles per 90, he ranks in the top 10 among players in the big-five leagues with more than 500 minutes of action to their name this season. Defenders find it very hard to prevent him making progress. “Players can either move the ball, which is what most do, or move their body,” Lancaster explained. “With him, it was completely unorthodox. I’ve never seen a player do that. The way he can drop his shoulder, the disguise he has. When someone else drops a shoulder, you can kind of read it, the patterns of the body. As a defender you say, ‘I’ve come up against this pattern before.’ But with Jadon, it’s completely unique. It would have been the first time a defender had ever seen this sort of movement. He lifts his leg one way, he moves his hip another way, he drops his shoulder another way. He’s just free-flowing.” Bundesliga defenders have regularly found the most the effective method of stopping him is to bring him down. While his 1.68 drawn fouls per 90 minutes is fairly average for a player in his position, some opponents have been much more aggressive. He was fouled four times in his 65 minutes on the pitch against Eintracht Frankfurt last weekend. “He keeps it close,” Lancaster continued. “For instance, in some one-on-one situations, if you actually just take a picture of the situation, how do you actually know who is defending? Because the distance from my foot and your foot to the ball could be the same. Whereas his foot is so close to the ball, is he actually making a decision for himself in his head when he goes past you or is he waiting for you to make his decision for him? His foot is so close to the ball, if you come for it, he’s now gone because he can move the ball instantaneously.” That Sancho keeps the ball close and well-protected also helps in a manner not fully captured by the data. As a child, playing in the enclosed areas of his South East London estate, against opponents older and younger, he refined the ability to make himself just enough space to get off his shot, pass or cross. That is still how he plays. One of his former England youth coaches once described him as the country’s answer to Neymar, but there is something in his shuffling strides, in the poise and pause in his game, in its innate efficiency, that is more reminiscent of Luis Figo. His ability to take players on isn’t something Sancho only utilizes in attacking areas. It is also a valuable tool for Dortmund in progressing the ball forward in transition. As this dribble map below shows, he quite often first picks up possession in deeper areas and helps move things upfield. That doesn’t even count the times when players back off him, giving him space to carry the ball uncontested.“Players on the ball have two options,” Lancaster said. “They have the soft option and the hard option. We always try and encourage players to get the ball and face the player up. So, you might receive it so you are facing the defender immediately, which is great, you can go one-on-one. Or if your back is towards the defender, sometimes people just take the soft option and pass it back. Jadon wasn’t happy with that. It was turn and go at this player...  If he did turn, and he did attack, that was helping us defensively. He’s now progressed the ball 20 yards up the pitch. If he loses it 20 yards up the pitch, we’re 20 yards further from our goal. So it was all complementary in transitional phases.” There is a recurring pattern in Dortmund’s transitions involving Sancho where he receives the ball, takes on and beats his initial marker and then seeks to initiate a one-two with a teammate to advance forward and infield. Sancho is comfortable moving into central areas in part because Lancaster, aware that he had an elite talent on his hands, regularly deployed him there. “If he’s in the center, he’s more involved,” he explained. “Not just in terms of touching the ball, but his brain is more involved. Even if he’s not getting the ball to his feet, he’s making decisions: does he shuffle in there, does he move over here, when does he move in there, how does he move in, what could he do better in this situation. He’s got more players around him. That was the idea, to constantly keep him overloaded with decisions.” Now that opponents are becoming cognizant of Sancho’s ability, the fear factor is beginning to play to Dortmund’s advantage. As teams have begun to adjust, to close Sancho down but not necessarily commit to a challenge, so Dortmund have started to utilize the channel inside of him, drawing his marker wide to the touchline and pushing a runner into the resultant space. All of this isn’t to say that Sancho is already the finished article. He is, after all, still just 18. “He knows that he still has a lot to improve,” as Dortmund coach Lucien Favre said earlier this season. But he has leveraged his outstanding attributes to become a regular contributor to a team challenging for the Bundesliga title and still hoping to make further progress in the Champions League, where they meet Tottenham Hotspur in the round-of-16. To Lancaster, it is clear that the opportunity to play regular first-team football at Dortmund has been of great benefit to Sancho. “When I watch him now, the way he defends, the way he gets into shape, he’s very disciplined,” he said. “I think watching him at Dortmund, week-in, week-out on the television, he’s unpredictable now. He’ll get the ball and just pop it, one touch. He’ll get the ball, have two touches and then pass it. When he was younger, it was attack, attack, attack, and now when you watch him, he’s calmer, he knows how to restore his energy, to rebuild it, which comes with maturity.” And he doesn’t think his former charge will be overawed by the occasion in the first leg against Spurs at Wembley this Wednesday. “I honestly believe that it doesn’t matter if he’s walking out onto South London recreational pitches with his mates or he’s walking out at Wembley, it’s the same environment for him,” Lancaster explained. “He just wants to play and have fun.”   Header image courtesy of the Press Association

We’re about two thirds of the way through Maurizio Sarri’s first season as Chelsea manager and it’s fair to say there are some grumblings about how well his football is being implemented. Chelsea haven’t exactly been terrible. Their expected goal difference per game of 0.60 is a touch up from last season’s 0.56. The results broadly match this,  goals, both scored and conceded are within the normal range of what we’d expect considering the side’s chances. The 50 points they’ve picked up so far this season is identical to their total after 25 games last year. If Antonio Conte were managing Chelsea this season and picked up the same results, with around the same standard of performances, the narrative around Stamford Bridge would be that, in the words of our dearly beloved Prime Minister, nothing has changed. Of course, this is all happening under not just a new manager, but one billed as a coach who can specifically build a new philosophy, moving away from Chelsea’s “defensive” reputation (a reputation that was often reductive if not wholly inaccurate) to a possession-heavy brand of entertaining football. This looked like it was happening in the early months of the season, but the club now find themselves in, if not a crisis, then at least a slump. As seen in the xG trendline, the attack has been declining since November while the defence hasn’t managed to pick up any extra slack. All of this, though, is well within the normal peaks and troughs we saw last season. The issue everyone has pointed towards is difficulties in the system, with the view becoming that the players Chelsea currently have are not suited to the rigid style of play Sarri is insisting upon. This does have some merit. With the exception of Jorginho, an alumnus of Sarri’s Napoli side, it’s not obvious that another outfielder in his preferred starting eleven is filling exactly the role they would want to play. What this seems to lead to is all of the build up play in the first two thirds of the pitch going through Jorginho, who is not especially difficult to press out of the game. Once the ball gets into the final third, we don’t often see clear patterns of play so much as Chelsea’s traditional fall back of giving the ball to Eden Hazard in the hope that he does something brilliant and unpredictable. Since he’s Eden Hazard, he often pulls this off, but it’s not exactly the vision of sarrismo that Chelsea fans imagined when the manager was hired. While Sarri has picked a largely settled team, upfront is where he’s been the most indecisive. The player he used most often in the role at the start of the season is Álvaro Morata. Across a season and a half at Chelsea he earned himself a reputation for missing chances, which does feel unfair. Over his full Chelsea career, he barely underperformed expected goals, scoring a well within normal range 11 from an expected total of 12.9. Hitting 0.54 xG per 90 over his whole spell at Chelsea, Morata was totally fine at scoring goals. His pressing was also fine for what Sarri needs, with his 14.89 pressures per 90 not amazing but better than strikers such as Harry Kane and Romelu Lukaku. Where there is a case for frustration, though, is in his link-up play. The Spaniard assisted just 0.21 expected goals at Chelsea this season, 0.02 per 90, a figure poorer than César Azpilicueta, David Luiz and N’Golo Kanté. He failed to complete a single open play pass into the box. This passmap in the defeat away to Wolves speaks to an all too frequent problem where Morata just wasn’t connecting with his teammates. Olivier Giroud has had very different issues. The Frenchman has always combined aerial threat with very tidy link-up play, being the ideal sort of striker for a wide player who looks to cut inside and dominate the game such as Hazard. This has been noted by Hazard himself, who stated that “when [Giroud] gets the ball he can hold the ball and we can go in deep with him, so for us it’s a pleasure to play with him”. He’s also a surprisingly good presser, with his 19.69 pressures per 90 better than any striker at a top six club not named Roberto Firmino (who doesn’t even play striker a lot of the time). Where his game doesn’t quite have an impact is goals. He’s probably a little unfortunate to only get the one in the league this season with an xG of 2.62, though that in some way speaks to the strange variability of the finishing for target men like Giroud. Even if he were scoring as the model expects, 0.32 xG per 90 isn’t great, so it’s reasonable to have some concerns. Chelsea were in a situation where neither striking options could tick both boxes of goalscoring and all round play, particularly linking with Hazard. The experiment of playing the Belgian as a striker himself rather than on the left was worthwhile, but seemed to very much irritate the club’s most talented player who seems to be agitating for a move. With the club’s recruitment process seeming very opaque since Michael Emenalo left the club, it was understandable that Sarri suggested bringing his former Napoli star Gonzalo Higuaín to the club. Sarri supposedly wanted this deal to be permanent, but a loan is what Chelsea ended up with, including the option to extend it into next season. This certainly lowers the downside, but can he be the goldilocks striker Sarri craves? A thing that is extremely obvious to anyone who thinks about it for two seconds but nonetheless often seemingly missed in transfer deals is that footballers age. Higuaín was incredible for Sarri’s Napoli in 2015/16, scoring a record breaking 36 goals, 33 of which were not penalties. That’s something else. The following year, after a move to an admittedly more conservative but still very dominant Juventus, he managed a respectable 24 non-penalty goals. Then last year, that figure fell to 15, or 0.48 per 90 minutes. In the first half of this season, he made a fairly notable step down from Juventus to Milan, so we should cut him at least some slack for a downturn in performance. But this, well, isn’t great:   When you look at his shot map, something becomes notable visually: he’s not getting into “poacher” positions right in front of goal so frequently. Whether that’s about Milan not creating the chances, Higuaín not being told to get there, or simply a 31 year old not quite having the same burst to get ahead of defenders anymore is an open question. Let’s be charitable for a second. Let’s say that Higuaín’s numbers declined at Juventus not due to what he was doing but because Massimiliano Allegri’s side are built to defend first and rely on the attack only when they really need it. And let’s say that his issues at Milan were about the Rossoneri being such a mess more than anything else. Thus Higuaín should be fine at 31 now that he’s playing attacking football under a manager who knows exactly how to use him. It’s a stretch, but one you have to believe completely to say this signing will work out. But ignore questions of his age for the time being. Will Higuaín fit in at Chelsea? We know he understands Sarri, but the question becomes about whether he understands Hazard. Player chemistry is a strange thing. Certainly, it’s possible to predict that things might work tactically, and Higuaín should be able to offer a bit more in terms of passing than Morata while holding a position and letting Hazard drift wherever he wants. But sometimes players just hit it off and sometimes they don’t. No one would have predicted that Diego Costa and Cesc Fàbregas would spark like they did. On the other hand, you can get Stewart Downing and Andy Carroll, the specialist crosser and specialist target man who never at Liverpool combined to score a goal. The very early evidence so far is interesting. The first league game to feature Higuaín was a terrible 4-0 loss to Bournemouth. As one would expect from the scoreline, Chelsea were generally very poor in this match, so it’s hard to blame the new guy too much. But he also just wasn’t involved. He had the fewest touches of the ball of any outfield player in a blue shirt, with 71. He didn’t manage to produce a single shot. When looking at the passmap of the game, Higuaín and Hazard are averaging touches in almost exactly the same place, except Hazard is much more involved, while the Argentine striker is a shade of turquoise. And then the exact opposite happened. Chelsea were superb against admittedly weak opposition in Huddersfield. Higuaín managed to not just score two goals, but also offer a much greater general threat. He had 132 touches of the ball, nearly twice as many as against Bournemouth (though he did play the full 90 minutes, rather than being substituted after 64), with a healthy five shots. Hazard looked happy playing off him, but perhaps the most pleasing thing was Higuaín’s understanding with Jorginho. Since the midfielder’s arrival at Stamford Bridge, he’s been a high volume passer who has often looked like he’s doing exactly what he’s been instructed to do, without any real connection to what’s around him. Here, he played some excellent balls through to the striker, offering a link that just hasn’t been seen this season, and one that shows up quite clearly on the passmap. Is this the start of something? It’s very hard to say. Perhaps this team just needed one additional player who understands the system, even if he’s not quite as sharp as he once was. Maybe he really does still have it, and will thrive once more. Maybe Huddersfield were just very poor and sterner tests lie ahead. I remain something of a sceptic on whether Higuaín is the player he once was. But there is at least an idea of how this signing might actually fit into a coherent side. Chelsea’s recruitment has seemed totally at odds with various managers at times, so having someone who fits a clear profile is a step in the right direction. What it is, though, is a temporary solution to what Chelsea surely hope will be a permanent system. If Sarri is to succeed at Stamford Bridge, it cannot be in a way that is entirely reliant on an ageing loanee starting upfront. A striker owned by the club will eventually have to fill that role, and Higuaín is only keeping his seat warm.   Heaer image courtesy of the Press Association

Son Heung-min is a superstar and it’s about time somebody noticed. On a minute for minute basis he’s been the most productive attacking player in the Premier League this season. He’s comfortable starting in wide positions, or operating as a central attacker with space to roam. Last season he played an important part as a facilitator for an all-time great season for Harry Kane. This year, Kane is doing more of the facilitating and it’s Son who’s reaping the rewards. Strip out penalties and on a minute for minute basis, nobody is scoring more than Son this year in the Premier League (among players with more than 600 minutes). He has 0.65 non-penalty goals per 90 minutes. That’s on par with Sergio Aguero and ahead of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Mohamed Salah. Among the leagues 20 most frequent goals scorers by per 90, only Raheem Sterling is averaging more assists than Son’s 0.36. Put it together and Son is the only player in England whose goal scoring contribution (combined non-penalty goals and assists per 90) is over one. Pretty good. There’s some air in those numbers. His expected goal rate is “only” 0.37 per 90, that’s 12^th in the Premier League. And his xG assisted rate of 0.15 does suggest that he’s been fairly lucky when it comes to his teammates putting the ball in the net when he passes it to them. So, it is true that he’s probably not the best attacker in the Premier League as his production to date indicates. He’s merely one of the best. One of the most amazing aspects of Son’s game is that he’s putting up massive production numbers while touching the ball in the penalty area fairly infrequently. He only has 8.22 touches in the box per 90 minutes. Of the 30 players in the Premier League averaging above 0.30 xG per 90 that’s the third lowest total. Only Riyah Mahrez and Xherdan Shaqiri touch the ball in the box less. Given that, it might be tempting to dismiss Son as a player who just jacks a lot of poor shots from deep, and then lucks into some goals. But that’s not fair either. He’s averaging 0.11 xG per shot, which is roughly average for a high volume shooter. Son’s 3.39 shots per 90 are the second most in England, and of the 20 most frequent shooters, seven have a better xG per 90 total than him. What Son has done, playing with Harry Kane, is take a roll that might have been thankless and turn it into an extremely productive one. Kane takes up the best central positions in the penalty box, and he’s excellent at it. Other attackers operating around a central striker are often left with mostly very low value scoring chances. Typically they can either feed the big man, or cut inside and take hopeful shots from distance. Son manages to both create a lot of these kinds of chances for himself, and upgrade their quality from hopeful potshots to above average goal scoring opportunities. In addition to Son’s scoring ability around the box, there’s also his ability to unsettle defenses with the ball at his feet. He’s completing two successful dribbles per match. There are vanishingly few players who create with the ball at their feet, and also manage to take a bunch of pretty good shots. Usually a player’s dribbling either happens far away from goal, indicating a player that won’t be getting into the box frequently, or results in bad shots for themselves or others. Beating players off the dribble is increasingly a skill deployed in build-up, rather than one in the final third. Son is one of only eight Premier League players who completes two dribbles per game, takes two shots and also manages to keep his xG per shot over 0.10. The others are Raheem Sterling, Leroy Sane, Sadio Mane, Pedro, Josh King, and West Ham’s wingers, Felipe Anderson and Michail Antonio. It’s an idiosyncratic list. And finally, Son is also careful with the ball. Despite being an attacker with lots of responsibilities he doesn’t turn it over much. He’s one of only twelve Premier League players that completes two dribbles per game while turning the ball over less than four times. He’s simply the complete package. What makes Son so attractive as a player is that he’s a little bit better at a lot of things than players who occupy a similar role. He gets a lot of shots, especially for somebody who isn’t the focal point of the attack and those shots are somewhat better on average than most attacking wingers. He does a lot of dribbling but manages not to be wasteful. This year all of that has resulted in a tremendous goal and assist return. But, even if the goals and assists drop back to a level supported by the underlying numbers, that still makes Son one of the best inside forwards in the Premier League. He should get treated that way.

This is awkward, but we really need to talk about Manuel Neuer. He’s a legend of a keeper. For a decade he’s been a unique and special player. His ability with the ball at his feet gained him a cult following, but it was the fact that he paired that with some of the best fundamental goalkeeping ability in the world that made him truly special. He was great at the basics. And then sometimes he’d also dribble the ball around just for fun. But the basics seem to have abandoned him. Bayern’s dominance means Neuer isn’t often called into action. The team only gives up 7.61 shots per match. That’s the best number in the Bundesliga. They are incredibly good at stifling opponents’ attacks. And, even when they do ultimately give up shots, those shots tend not to be dangerous ones. Opponents, on average, take shots from 18.49 yards away from Bayern’s goal. That’s the furthest out of any side in the Bundesliga, and they’re worth 0.09 expected goals per shot, again the lowest average volume. The shots Bayern are giving up don’t seem to be bad shots. And, yet, they keep flying into the net. It is of course possible, that Neuer has simply run into a string off awful luck. That despite having a mediocre collection of shots, strikers just keep hitting the ball outstandingly and picking out corners in ways that Neuer couldn’t hope to stop. Except that post-shot xG suggests this isn’t the case. The post-shot value of the shots Neuer has faced is almost exactly the same. The model spits out 11.0 expected goals conceded from open play. Neuer has conceded 16. There is one interesting statistical wrinkle here. As the two charts show, relatively few of the shots that Bayern have given up have found their way on target, and of those that have, they’ve been mostly the most dangerous shots. The result is that despite the fairly innocuous profile of shots that Bayern have given up on the whole, the ones that Neuer has ended up facing have been quite dangerous. His job has been harder than it might seem at first glance. His expected save rate is only 69.7%. That’s the seventh lowest in the league. The problem is, that even when you adjust for all of that Neuer is still failing miserably. His save percentage is only 59%. Among first choice keepers that’s the second lowest total in the league. Worse, the difference between his save percentage, and his expected save percentage, that 10.7% gap, it’s also the second worst in Germany. There’s no way to sugar coat it. Neuer has just been bad. The fact that Bayern themselves are quite good has gone a long way to masking his performance. They’ve only conceded 19 total goals. Only two teams have conceded fewer, and they’re on 18. Bayern’s defensive record is close to the best in the league, so how bad could Neuer really be anchoring it? Well, when you graph goals conceded against the goals save above average percentage it becomes clear just how large an outlier Neuer is. What this makes crystal clear is that the defense is carrying Neuer right now. He’s conceded a stingy number of goals despite the way he’s played. The defense deserves the credit for not allowing more dangerous shots for Neuer to struggle saving. It’s not like Neuer is dominating in the air when it comes to commanding his box either. Here’s the heatmap showing how likely he is to come for claimable balls in his box. He faced 212 total balls, and came for 12 of them, a little more conservative than the 13.6 our model predicts. That makes him, by our model, only the seventh most aggressive keeper in and around his penalty area in the Bundesliga. It’s also true that he’s faced very few balls that a keeper would frequently claim. Only five balls into the box all season where the type that a keeper would come for more than 30% of the time. He came for two of them (an exactly average frequency given the balls faced), but he missed one. The fact that his overall success rate on claims is 92% and fine, exists in concert with the fact that he’s only one for two on the more meaningful ones. In a different context maybe these stats wouldn’t be so alarming. Players have bad stretches, even great ones. Keepers have bad years, or half years, and bounce back all the time. But, taking a step back actually makes the situation look worse, not better. Neuer isn’t young, he’ll be 33 in March. Keepers often have longer athletic lives than outfield players, but 33 is still pushing it. It’s an age where, in a vacuum you’d expect a keeper to get worse not better. Then there are the injuries. Neuer missed the vast majority of last season with foot problems. His performance still hasn’t recovered. Correlation doesn’t equal causation, but it doesn’t rule it out either. Put it all together and this is a four-alarm fire for Bayern. Neuer used to be a star, now he’s facing a life comes at you fast crisis. All of a sudden he’s become an old keeper coming off an injury who hasn’t come close to recovering his form half a season after getting back on the pitch. If Bayern don’t rally over the last half of the season and catch Borussia Dortmund, Neuer’s deterioration will be a large part of what went wrong. A year ago it would have been sacrilegious to question Neuer’s place. Now? Unless he improves dramatically over the second half of this season it’s clear Bayern will need to upgrade the keeper position going into next year. The keeper might be a legend, but eventually father time comes for legends too.