Orta’s Power Five : Advanced 8(The El Mago Role)

How do? Welcome to a new edition of Orta’s Power Five, where we attempt to guess some of the names using data that are wrote down in a little notebook somewhere on Victor Orta’s person or in a safe in his office of 5 transfer targets per position.

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Last time we discussed the “Reserved 8” and this time we are looking at the “Advanced 8”, a lot of people refer to this position as our “Number 10” or as an attacking midfielder. However the position plays a lot different to a regular attacking midfielder and in general they drop a lot deeper to help us with defence which a traditional number 10 wouldn’t do.

They are however expected to be further up the field in the attacking transition than their midfield partner, this is the role owned by Pablo Hernandez the last few years and which has been taken on by Tyler Roberts & Rodrigo Moreno. Both of these players play the role vastly different and both have their strengths and weaknesses. Tyler has improved a lot as the season has gone on but still has issues with decision making in the final third and overplaying as well as problems with composure when shooting but he really is great at pressing, progressing the ball via passes & carries & general link up play. Rodrigo on the other hand is very bad at pressing, and his midfield partner really has to make an extra effort with him involved but when fit he is generally elite at running with the ball, has an eye for a pass similar to El Mago and can strike a ball very cleanly from any distance and the keeper will be sweating.

We need to nail down the key parts of this role and which we can identify with data, this time I will be less focused on the pressing and defensive side of the game but they do still need to be competent at these parts of the game. As such all players will initially be filtered so they won’t display if they don’t have 10 pressures p90 & 2 Tackles & Interceptions p90.

Dribbles & Carries

Firstly I want to look at progression via dribbling & Carrying, this player has to be confident to dribble past players as well as progressing the ball via general ball carrying. It isn’t sufficient that they are just able to progress the ball well via carrying, they have to be able to dribble past their marker.

I have also filtered out players who are 28 or older and who haven’t played 1000 or more minutes this season and lastly no players will show who are in teams qualified for UCL or are a “big 6” club. This will give us a good group of players to mull over and we will gradually filter out more players so the visuals slowly look cleaner.

One of the names above should not be a big surprise, the man a lot of Leeds fans fell in love with when we were linked with last season Rodrigo de Paul, I am not going to look at him as I don’t personally feel he is now a realistic target for us. I will say though that he is the man I would choose if he was realistic.

The first player I do want to look at is Amine Harit, Amine is 23 years old and plays in Bundesliga for Schalke 04. He has been with Schalke since 2017 signing from FC Nantes for £7mil. Amine loves to dribble and has more dribbles than anyone else in this visual with 4.3 p90, his carries are also strong with 7.1 p90. He’s a good age, his club are getting relegated, someone is going to sign this boy, why not LUFC?

Second player is another player with a similar name Amin Younes, he is a player who popped up in my previous “Reserved 8” article, he didn’t quite fit the mould for the reserved 8 but he could for the advanced 8. In case you didn’t read the previous article Amine plays in Bundesliga for Eintracht Frankfurt on loan from Napoli in Serie A, Amin joined Napoli in 2018 from Ajax for a fee of £4.5mil after joining Ajax for a fee of £2.2mil from Borussia Monchengladbach with who he came through the Youth ranks. He 27 years old and is a Germany International with 7 Caps & 2 goals. Amin has 3.7 dribbles & 8.4 carries p90. Lets see if he pops up in any later visuals.

The third player to highlight is one we have faced twice this season, that is Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa, this is a player who has impressed me a lot this season. He has been one of the few shining lights in Fulhams season, he loves to pick up the ball and drive into the heart of midfields, he even gave Kalvin Phillips nightmares in the first match this season. Andre is 25 years old and a Cameroon International who joined Fulham in 2018 for a pretty high fee of £22mil, when Fulham got relegated in that same season he was loaned out to Villareal and then re-joined Fulham when they were promoted again to Premier League. He has 3.1 Dribbles & 5.9 progressive carries p90 which are impressive numbers, he’d be an expensive purchase and one which may be too much but he’d be worth it.

Lastly I want to look at briefly is Saïd Benrahma, he is in a very good position here with 3.3 dribbles & 8.2 progressive carries, he is a player that we could have signed last season imo. We decided against it, I feel this could be down to his personality with his infamous haircut video last year, I don’t think he would have fit the mould of a Bielsa player personality wise and as such I won’t be considering him for us. On top of this he would be very expensive with only just signing for West Ham last year.

Penalty Area play

Now I want to look at how involved the players are in and around the oppositions penalty area, this player needs to be able to unlock defences with their passing and dribbling. Especially when we play against sides giving us a low block defence to unlock.

Based on the previous visual there are a couple more filters to add, this time players won’t be on the next visual if they don’t have 3 progressive passes & 3 progressive carries. I will also be preferring players who pass into the box more than carry into the box, this is mainly because I feel we have sufficient entries with carries from Raphinha & Jack Harrison and would prefer more via passing. The above should lead to a lot less players in outlying positions.

Well I did say “Should” lead to less players in outlying positions, there is a lot of players in strong positions here, especially in the top right who enter the box with passes & carries. There are a lot of players I have ignored in this section either because I don’t feel they are the right kind of player overall or that they will be too expensive.

Firstly I will briefly cover a couple of players we have already seen in the last visual, firstly Amin Younes is in a strong position with 1.7 passes & 1 carries into the box p90. Secondly Zambo Anguissa with 0.78 passes & 0.5 carries. Thirdly we see again Amine Harit with 1.6 passes & 0.4 carries p90. All of these players once again are in strong positions but only Amin Younes is in the top corner.

Secondly I want to look in the far left corner at Valerio Verre. Valerio plays in Serie A for Sampdoria. Valerio has 2.3 passes into the penalty area 2nd only to Rodrigo de Paul but has a lot less carries with only 0.1 p90. He signed for Sampdoria in 2017 for £3.7mil, he has been something of a journeyman in Italy playing for 6 different clubs in the last 8 years. He plays for the pressiest team in Serie A and is a hard worker with 19.7 pressures so he would adapt quickly to our style. Lets see if we see his name again.

Lastly I want to look at Daichi Kamada, Daichi plays in Bundesliga for Eintracht Frankfurt, he signed for them from Sagan Tosu in the J-League for a very small £1.4mil. He is in just in the top right quadrant with 1.13 passes p90 & impressively has 0.97 carries into the box. Daichi is a Japan international with 10 caps and is a hard working player with 19.59 pressures p90 & 2.7 tackles & Interceptions p90.

Goal Threat

Next I want to quickly look at how good the players are at goal scoring, as for us historically this position has scored a chunk of our goals, recently this has dropped off with Roberts not being a strong threat due to his limitations infront of goal. Rodrigo does however have this goal threat with most of his career being spent as a striker. When Pablo Hernandez played in this position in 18/19 he had his personal best record for scoring with 12 goals scored. This is something I would like to be present for any new signings in this position as it will help Bamford out when he’s not on his best form.

On top of the previous filters I am also adding one based on the previous visual, now I will also only allow players with 0.3 carries & 1 pass to Penalty Area p90. I want to only focus on Non Penalty contributions so will look at NPxG(Non Penalty Expected Goals) & G-PK(Goals minus Penalty Kicks)

There isn’t as many players here overall and as such the players we have discussed before have also dipped, the one who has stayed is Amin Younes, he is once again in a strong position. Amin has 0.21 G-PK and 0.23 npxG p90 which means he has slightly underperformed his npxG but not by a massive amount, he had 3.4npxG and scored 3 non penalty goals so this isn’t a concern.

The first new player to discuss is Ludovic Blas, he is 23 years old and plays for FC Nantes is Ligue 1, he signed for Nantes from Guingamp for £7mil in 2019, he has had a stand out season scoring 10 goals & assisting 5 goals in 35 app’s. Here we can see he has the most G-PK with 0.32 p90 which has over performed his npxG of 0.22 overall he has scored his 10 goals from 6.5 npxG which is a big overperformance. Ludovic is once again a hard working midfielder with 20 pressures p90 & 2.8 Tackles & Interceptions. He completes a strong amount of dribbles with 2.8 and lastly he is pretty good at progressing the ball with 5.5 progressive carries & 2.9 progressive passes.

Assists & Shot Creating Actions

The only skill left to discuss is the players direct creativity and contribution to a teams goal scoring. We will examine this by looking at KP(Key Passes) & SCA(Shot Creating Actions). Since this is focusing on creativity I will use only open-play SCA.

There are a couple of familiar faces here, firstly Amine Harit looking strong again with 2 KP & 2.2 SCA, secondly is Valerio Verre with 1.8 KP & 2.7 SCA which is good enough for 2nd in SCA. Lastly we have Daichi Kamada with 2.1 KP & 2.4 SCA.

Firstly when it comes to new players to examine we have Angelo Fulgini, Angelo is 24 and plays for Angers SCO in Ligue 1, he signed for them for £1.2mil from Valenciennes FC which seems to be a bargain price. Angelo is very strong when it comes to progression with 5.1 progressive passes & 7.1 progressive carries p90 and he also completes 2.6 dribbles which is strong also. On this visual he stands out due to his SCA of 2.5 & his KP of 1.9. This season is Angelo’s 4th season in Ligue 1 and has 112 app’s so far starting playing in the division at 20 years old. He has scored 6 goals & registered 3 assists thus far.

Next lets have a look at Yacine Adli, this is the first time Yacine has been mentioned in this article but he featured heavily in my previous reserved 8 article. Please see this article( https://martin-cbm-riley.medium.com/ortas-power-five-reserved-8-e02388d8ccaf ) for his full detail as he is a phenomenal player at a young age. When it comes to this visual Yacine has 2 KP’s & 2.5 SCA p90.

The last player I want to look at is Bersaint Celina, Celina is 24 years old and plays for Dijon FCO in Ligue 1, he joined Dijon from Swansea City for £2.7mil and prior to this he had been with Manchester City from a young age joining up with their U18’s in 2012. His stats in this visual are strong with 1.95 KP’s & 1.7 SCA. He hasn’t stood out massively well in any other visuals but the ones which do stand out are Progressive Carries-4.7, Dribbles-1.3 & Passes to Penalty Area-1.6.

Final Targets

We have gone into detail on 9 different players however only 5 of them can make the cut, the players I have gone for have been in outlying positions in more than one visual with one exception, I went with Ludovic Blas over Zambo Anguissa as I believe Zambo Anguissa would be quite expensive despite Fulham’s relegation.

Lets now compare all of their stats one last time to show you just why we picked these players

As you can see all of these players have their strengths and weaknesses, however most of them have more strengths than weaknesses, any one of these players would be a great addition to Leeds United and I feel Marcelo Bielsa could iron out any deficiencies in their ability.

Now I will look at how much each of these players would cost us, this will be an estimation based on different data from Transfermarkt. I could easily be drastically wrong in this section so take all this with a big pinch of salt.

As we can see all of the above would be realistic transfers, I have erred on the side of caution with some and over estimated but the two transfers I feel most positive about is Amine Harit & Ludovic Blas. Schalke have just been relegated and it is possible we could buy Amine for quite a small amount & FC Nantes have never sold a player for a large amount of money and combined with the current money problems due to TV deals collapsing the French League’s could well be a buyers haven this season.

I hope you have enjoyed my article and will come back for the last entry in this series where I look at Strikers and see if there is anyone out there who possible compare to our Lord Bamford.

Ciao!