5 Attacking Midfielders, which one do you sign?
So, what are we going to do today?
Well, on the back of the recent stats post, I thought I'd take a look at who might be going under the radar of most, youngsters coming through at clubs in the top 5 leagues in Europe only.
Then I'll look at some Spurs statistics and finally the 5 attacking midfielders option.
The Top 5 Leagues are:
Premier League (England)
LaLiga (Spain)
Bundesliga (Germany)
Serie A (Italy)
Ligue 1 (France)
Top of the tree of players who do the graft before a goal or assist, by a country mile, is 18-year-old (19 next January) Álex Blesa at Levante in LaLiga.
He is a Spanish U-17 international (10 caps, 1 goal) central midfielder who has only just been given his debut.
He is on loan from Bordeaux until 2021 when Atalanta have an option to buy him.
Next up it is to the Premier League and Crystal Palace we look in the shape of 18-year-old (19 in December) Brandon Pierrick who is an attacking midfielder.
Across to Germany and the Bundesliga, our scouts should be watching the progress of 19-year-old (20 next April) Leon Dajaku at Bayern Munich.
He is a young right-winger carving a name for himself in the youth ranks and been blooded twice in the German top flight.
Finally in this section we'll move to Italy and Inter Milan where 18-year-old (19 next February) Lucien Agoumé is a defensive midfielder for the future.
He cost Inter £4.05m from French side Sochaux last summer and has made 3 substitute appearances so far.
Spurs
Over to Spurs now as this is a Spurs blog and a look at who are our best PPV per 90 minute players.
PPV means “Pass Progression Value”. It measures the ability of a player to pass the ball into “dangerous zones”.
A ball backwards putting a team mate under pressure results in negative points and a danger creating forward pass plenty of positive points.
This is really a metric for midfield player as the further forward you play the less chance you have to post positive figures, longer passes hold more value in this metric).
Gedson Fernandes 0.68
Giovani Lo Celso 0.56
Harry Winks 0.52
Ryan Sessegnon 0.48
Tanguy Ndombélé 0.45Serge Aurier 0.42
Juan Foyth 0.40
Ben Davies 0.38
Kyle Walker-Peters 0.36
Eri Lamela 0.33
Moussa Sissoko 0.31
Danny Rose 0.27
Toby Alderweireld 0.26
Dele Alli 0.24
Eric Dier 0.22
Lucas Moura 0.20
Son Heung-min 0.18
Oliver Skipp 0.15
Japhet Tanganga 0.13
Davinson Sanchez 0.10
Harry Kane 0.08
The standout for me is at the bottom there, Davinson Sanchez.
With the whole pitch in front of him to make forward progressive passes has a terrible score.
That rather highlights that he passes back to the goalkeeper too much, moves the opposition up the field and puts pressure on us, allows them to press us higher up the pitch.
Personally I think he has a lot of improving to do and quite frankly, he has been here long enough to start making improvements to his game.
OK, let's throw another unseen metric at you, a score that shows how involved a player is in us scoring a goal.
The whole movement is analysed and more important contributions receive a higher mark.
This is called the xG value and shows Dele Alli and Moussa Sissoko in good light.
Dele Alli 0.53
Harry Kane 0.40
Son Heung-min 0.34
Moussa Sissoko 0.29
Erik Lamela 0.25
Lucas Moura 0.22
Eric Dier 0.20
Giovani Lo Celso 0.18
Harry Winks 0.16
Davinson Sanchez 0.13
Toby Alderweireld 0.11
Serge Aurier 0.10
Tanguy Ndombélé 0.09
Ben Davies 0.08
Kyle Walker-Peters 0.07
Danny Rose 0,05
Gedson Fernandes 0.04
Japhet Tanganga 0.03
Ryan Sessegnon 0.02
Wilfried Zaha is a name many of you want at Tottenham for some absurd reason but he was dispossessed more times tan any other player in the 2019.20 season.
Mind you he was the only player to attempt over 200 dribbles and dribbled past more players than anyone else (146).
It rather tells you he like to keep the ball himself doesn't it which rather backs up what I have always said, he is only interested in the game when he has got the ball.
An unnoticed part of Callum Wilson's game is that he commits a lot of fouls.
Only two players have committed more fouls than Callum Wilson, Watford defensive midfielder Étienne Capoue and Arsenal defensive midfielder Grant Xhaka.
He has injury history and Bournemouth want far too much for him at present.
We don't want to be overpaying for a crock.
Who could we look to in Europe?
Plenty think we need an attacking midfielder to replace Christian Eriksen, but that assumes we would be playing the same style as Pochettino and we are not.
Do we therefore need a like for like replacement, can't we just bring in some solid defensive midfielders and move Winks and Lo Celso further forward (Lo Celso played AM for the second half of the LaLiga season) into more attacking areas?
In the last post I answered your Marcel Sabitzer questions so today let's look at a couple of alternatives.
As a reminder Sabitzer is ranked 14th out of 273 creative players and 20th out of 922 midfield and attacking players in the top 5 leagues in Europe.
Luis Alberto
The popular newspaper choice to replace Eriksen is regularly 27-year-old (28 in September) Luis Alberto simply because of his assists.
Alberto is overall ranked as 7th out of 273 creative players and 11th out of 922 midfield and attacking players in the top 5 leagues in Europe.
Luis Alberto
Luis Alberto Romero Alconchel
Position: FW-MF (AM-CM-WM) ▪ Footed: 95% Right*
182cm (5'11½") 73kg (161lb)
Born: September 28, 1992 (Age:27)
National Team: Spain es
Club: Lazio
Playing at Lazio, he has progressed since his Liverpool experience and the Spaniard has been around a bit before finding his feet in Italy.
Could he as a more mature player compete in other leagues?
That is the gamble and given you want to decrease the failure percentage when you sign a player, I'd have reservations.
He has plenty going for him, he had 15 assists, 2nd highest in Serie A.
Alberto Stats
21 goals and assists (10th)
255 passes into the final third (5th)
108 key passes (1st)
97 passes into the penalty area (2nd)
376 progressive passes (1st)
16 through balls (1st)
179 crosses (8th)
203 shot creating actions (1st)
28 goal creating actions (2nd)
2,663 touches (2nd)
76 players dribbled past (8th)
10 nutmegs (1st)
10,674 progressive carrying distance yards (1st)
2,150 pass targets hit (2nd)
Alberto is under contract at Lazio until 2022 and given they finished 4th, therefore qualifying for the UEFA Champions League group stages, he isn't a realistic option.
He would likely be out of our price range and wouldn't want to leave Champions League football for Europa League football while he is reportedly earning £58k-a-week.
Best we therefore look elsewhere and that elsewhere takes me to another player playing in Italy at perhaps a less fashionable club, but one that has had the best run of any Italian team in the premier European competition this season.
Ruslan Malinovskyi
Ruslan Malinovskyi
Ruslan Volodymyrovych Malinovskyi
Маліновський Руслан Володимирович
Position: MF (DM) ▪ Footed: 87% Left*
181cm (5'11")
Born: May 4, 1993 (Age: 27)
National Team: Ukraine ua
Club: Atalanta
Malinovskyi is overall ranked as 12th out of 273 creative players and 16th out of 922 midfield and attacking players in the top 5 leagues in Europe.
Now Atalanta finished 3rd and have qualified for the Champions League again and has a contract until 2024 but is reportedly earning just £22k a week.
This makes him a cheaper option than Alberto, Transfermarkt have him at £9.9m compared to Alberto at £39.60m.
Bit of a difference so even allowing for these figures to undervalue players, he would still be a cheap option.
The Ukrainian international (27 caps, 5 goals) averages 4.57 shots per game (3rd), 1.58 shots on target (7th).
He has an excellent combination of passing/assisting, shooting/scoring, and on-ball possession.
He had 9 goal creating action, an average of 0.53 per 90 minutes.
112 shot creating actions, an average of 6.57 per 90 mins.
Gedson Fernandes 3.97, Giovani Lo Celso 3.56, Erik Lamela 3.48, Son Heung-min had 3.45 and Lucas Moura 3.37.
He only played 1, 535 minutes, compared to 3,113 by Alberto so if you doubled his stats he would be very comparable to Alberto.
But a third of the price.
Who else might be available for a decent fee, well I have two more for you, a World Cup winner and a Barcelona player.
Mario Götze
Mario Götze
Mario Götze
Position: FW-MF (AM) ▪ Footed: 91% Right*
176cm (5'9") 71kg (157lb)
Born: June 3, 1992 (Age: 28) in Memmingen, West Germany de
National Team: Germany de
Mario Götze is a World Cup winner and a free agent.
He has 5 German titles, 4 German Cups and 1 FIFA World Club Cup.
Attacking midfielder Götze is 28 (29 next June) and wants to continue in Europe having turned down Inter Miami, David Beckham's new MLS team.
The American side offered him €6 million a year, he was on around €10 million at Borussia Dortmund.
That MLS offer equates to roughly £100,000-a-week.
Now plenty of you will be shouting no,but this guy has the best assists per game ratio of any player in the 21 century.
He was directly involved in 106 goals in 219 games for Dortmund but last season only played 521 minutes in the Bundesliga and 546 minutes in all competitions.
He has been directly involved in 29 Champions League goals in 62 matches, a goal every 320 minutes and a goal or assists every 132 minutes.
He has experience at the highest level and big club experience, he was at Bayern Munich before moving to Borussia Dortmund and Tottenham have spoken to him before about joining the club.
He has experience of playing as a centre-forward, he had an assist in the Champions League against Inter playing there this season, as a secondary striker and an attacking midfielder.
He scored 3 goals in the Bundesliga in his 521 minutes, a goal every 174 minutes.
With no transfer fee there will be a signing on fee and his wages are not astronomical, especially when you think we have agreed £70,000-a-week for Callum Wilson.
42.9% of his shots were on target last season and 0.67 of his shots on target were goals.
Götze seems like a rather sensible option to me, he has won plenty like Joe Hart, my only concern is that I'm wondering if he is after money now given the link to tax haven club Monaco, but then Monaco are coached by a German.
OK, my final offering is a Brazilian at Barcelona with 1 year left on his contract and would also be around £100,000-a-week.
Rafinha
Rafinha
Rafael Alcântara do Nascimento
Position: MF (AM) ▪ Footed: 85% Left*
174cm (5'8½") 71kg (157lb)
Born: February 12, 1993
National Team: Brazil br
Club: Barcelona
Barcelona want to offload players and he is one of them they will let go.
His Transfermarkt valuation is just £8.55m.
His trophy haul includes 1 Champions League, 3 LaLIga titles,5 Spanish Cups, 4 Spanish Super Cups, 1 UEFA Super Cup and 1 Olympic Gold Medal.
He started the season for Barcelona, signed a one-year extension and was then loaned out to Celta Vigo who have an option to buy him that they haven't taken up yet.
Tackles won 56 (8th)
Tackles 79 (9th)
Fouls drawn 109 (2nd)
Aerial duels won 54.4%
149 dribbles
75.7% dribbles successful
62 shot creation actions (+13 for Barcelona)
2.64 shot creation actions per 90 mins (6.29 for Barcelona)
86.4% pass completion (86.6% for Barcelona)
91% success rate on passes of 2 - 25 yards
78% success rate on passes of more than 25 yards
31.3% shots on target
0.40 goals per shots on target
He has big club experience, trophy winning experience, the experience of the expectation of winning and is a player who came through the Barcelona academy.
Do you go for:
26yo Sabitzer at £30m+
27yo Alberto at £30m+
27yo Malinovskyi at £15m
28yo Götze on a free
27yo Rafinha £8m
You're the boss, who do you sign, bearing in mind our constricted financial budget and need to offload players to bring others in?
I would plump for World Cup winner Mario Götze.
COYS
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