Brenden Aaronson, Finally a midfielder. Yes he counts….
Salutations and welcome, Finally we have signed a damn Central midfielder, okay he’s an attacking midfielder but he counts and that’s what I’m sticking to. Something which hasn’t happened since we signed Adam Forshaw in January 2018.
This will be the first player signed under Jesse Marsch, but quite funnily enough this is also a player who Marcelo Bielsa signed off on too, so he’s a player who has played under Marsch previously and was approved by Bielsa.
History & Playing Career
So Brenden Aaronson, some background on our newest signing who has signed for a sizeable fee of around £25mil from RB Salzburg in Austria, Brenden started his career in 2017 first playing for Bethlehem Steel in the USL Championship before moving to the MLS with Philadelphia Union in 2019.
He spent a few years in Philly, where I hear it is always Sunny before taking a trip all the way to Austria with RB Salzburg for a fee of $6mil in January 2021, so Salzburg have made quite the profit from this young American in just a season and a half.
Below are his goal contributions across different positions in his career, the below is for all the clubs he has played for, not just for RB Salzburg, just to give a general overview of where he is most effective.
As you can see he has played a lot more times as an attacking midfielder than anywhere else, however he does contribute more goals and assists as a Left Midfielder, which is somewhere he has played a lot under Jesse Marsch with whom he played nearly all his games a winger, he played 21 games under Marsch with 17 of these appearances as a Left Midfielder and in these 17 games he had 5 goals & 4 assists which add’s up to 0.43 g/a per 90.
However it should be noted at this point that Transfermarkt may have him down as a Left Midfielder for these games, but I have a feeling that he will look more like a Left Sided Attacking Midfielder rather than a Left Midfielder, it may not seem like much of a distinction but it does make a difference.
Playing Style
So what kind of player is Brenden? Well first thing to note of is he is a very hard working player, which is obvious given the Bielsa seal of approval. He presses like a beast and never stops working. His relentless off the ball work can lead to high turnovers leading to goal scoring opportunities, like in the clip below.
This goes hand in hand with certain physical upsides he has, which are mainly his stamina & acceleration. He’s quick to close down players and quick to break when the team needs to counter attack and can do it a lot.
There may be some people who are expecting Brenden to be our Pablo Hernandez replacement, this is not the case. Brenden is not a passing maestro who will help us unlock defenses with the perfectly timed pass.
However this isn’t what Jesse Marsch wants from all his attacking players so this isn’t a bad thing. Jesse Marsch likes to attack at speed, so what he needs is players who are fast enough to keep up with this pace.
In addition he needs players who can control the ball well when surrounded by opposition players and progress the ball quickly to their more attacking teammates via short link up passes to team mates who are already close to him, which is one of the reasons why Marsch wants his team compact, so players have lots of close options. The below clip shows off Aaronson’s close control quite well.
As you can see in this below clip, Salzburg are looking to hit Villareal on the counter, Aaronson times his run perfectly and manages to find the player ahead of him, unfortunately the player couldn’t do much with the shot.
Aaronson likes to get involved in deeper buildup too, in the below clip he drops right to the edge of his box, makes some smart link up passes and the counter attack is on.
In the next clip I’ve found a good example of Brenden showing good defensive responsibility. It would be easy for an attacking midfielder to switch off in this instance and stay further forward but he picks up the run of the player and follows him towards the box. I love to see this from an attacker.
I’ve noticed when watching that when he was playing under Marsch there was more dropping deep to linkup play and since Marsch has left he has shown less of this, this could be a tactical instruction. But either way he can be effective when he’s trying to break past the last line, like you see in the below clip.
Data
Now we move on to what the data says about Brenden, on a basic level we’ve already covered his goals & assists in an earlier segment. But now lets look a little deeper.
When it comes to defensive output I don’t have data for pressing, however I do have some useful stats to demonstrate what he does out of possession. All the following data comes from Wyscout and will be per90. Also if there are any % on display, they will represent the players success rate in the metric.
As you can see on the below graphic, he is quite active recovering the ball, especially so in Zone 14 which is the zone directly infront of the middle of the penalty box, so it’s a very key area for recoveries to be made in a counter pressing system.
He averaged 2.43 Interceptions, 3.98 recoveries in opposition half & 6.48 total defensive duels won in the Austrian Bundesliga this season. To put this in perspective against Dan James who most would agree is one of our best defenders from the front.
Dan James averaged 1.7 Interceptions, 2.88 recoveries in opposition half & 3.88 defensive duels won. Now obviously James is doing so in a much harder league so we should take this with a pinch of salt, but either way it’s a good sign.
Moving on to more offensive data, when it comes to moving with the ball. Aaronson attempts 3.71(48%) dribbles, and makes 1.42 progressive runs. In comparison to Jack Harrison, who attempts 5.03(55.2%) Dribbles with and he makes 3.34 progressive runs.
Below are some visuals for where he dribbles the most, you may see some discrepancies here as the below shows a success rate of 65.7%, I’m still quite new to Wyscout data but to me this could be explained by the previous success rate of 55.2% could have been where he kept the ball and the 65.7% could be when the team kept the ball, if anyone else knows better DM me as I’m unsure.
For an attacking player he does attempt a lot of passes with a pretty good success attempting 27.56(77%). Also the same when it comes to further up the pitch attempting 2.89(61.9%) passes to final third. Also respectable numbers for penalty area passes with 3.04(46.6%) attempted.
This time I’m going to use Rodrigo as a comparison, who attempts 30.26(77%) passes, 4.16(71.8%) to the Final Third & 2.25(60.6%) into the Penalty Area. So he attempts more passes both to the final third & penalty area but with a lower success rate. Still promising but these will probably decrease in the Premier League.
Finally lets look at how his direct creativity would compare, firstly Expected Assists(xA), Aaronson produces 0.14 along with 1.16 shot assists(SA). Again if we compare this with Rodrigo it’s a promising set of numbers as Rodrigo has 0.92SA & 0.1 xA.
Below is a visual showing Aaronson’s entries into the Penalty area via multiple methods. As you can see there isn’t many crosses in this list showing he prefers to enter the box with passes & carries.
But when you do look at crosses in particular you can see he’s actually quite effective at this too. He’s more successful with his left foot, but attempts a lot more with his right, this demonstrates to me that he mainly will attempt with his left for easier crosses.
That’s my section on data covered quite thoroughly, I enjoyed that and I hope you all did too!
Conclusion
There’s been a lot to digest here so lets try to sum up, we can see in Brenden a very talented young man who is about to step into one of the toughest league’s in the world, to some the toughest.
Firstly we need to be patient with him, if he doesn’t immediately deliver on his quite pricey £25mil fee lets not throw him to the wolves immediately. The fee we’re paying is heavily weighted towards the potential Brenden has and as such we need to view this as a long term process.
However I’ve seen enough in my time watching Brenden that we have a very committed, hard working player on our hands. He will leave everything on the pitch for us and if in doing so he wins us some games then fantastic.
Welcome to Yorkshire & Leeds United Brenden, I hope you enjoy your stay with us.
Thanks for Reading
Martin Riley
NB. Follow me at https://twitter.com/MartinCBMRiley or not, I’m not your mum.
