Watford is interested in signing Senegalese U23 international Rassoul Ndiaye from FC Sochaux. The 21-year-old central midfielder is valued at €3m on Transfermatkt. In Ligue 2 this season, he made 30 appearances. [ Via @footmercato]
Never ******* heard of him. I did however, watch 16 of his matches last season so can confirm this guy is absolutely ACE! He's just a rassoul, a dizzy rassoul.
Ndiayyyyyeeee will always love you (when you're sold to Udinese for £19m in 6 months time when we need to pay off the next round of MacQuarie interest)
That seems a bit like Choudhury - good at winning the ball but then does nothing with it except for probably safe passes backwards and sideways.
He looks to offer a bit more on the ball than Choudhury, but then I'd imagine Choudhurys progression would likely be improved playing in Ligue 2 and Ndiayes would be impacted by moving to a harder league so not sure what to make of the stats without watching him!
@reids if it's not too much trouble can you do one for Federico Redondo. His through passing and press resistance are excellent. Does a decent job in shielding the defence too. Maybe via Udinese to us ? Thanks.
Thanks for all these @reids but because I'm old can you just explain a couple of things? I presume this an average over 90 mins, so this chap has 1.4 turnovers every 90 mins? xG buildup? Is that if he touches the ball (not assisted) in the build up to a goal What is PAdj? How does he compare to the midfielder from last season with the best stats, ours and the whole league?
Of course! Yup you're correct - they're based on a per 90 basis so 1.4 turnovers every 90 mins is correct and is compared against every player in that position across every season in their database (which goes back to 18/19) to work out the percentile ranking with each rung representing 10%, so his passing accuracy of 89% is in the top 6% of all midfielders. Their definition of xGBuildup is: "A model that attributes the xG value of the final shot to all players involved in the entire possession. While another metric named xGChain attributes this value to all players involved in the entire possession, xGBuildup omits xG and xG Assisted to focus on possession work prior to the end of the chain" - so basically it's a value that rewards players contributions in possession prior to a shot being taken, so a teams midfield that goes long from their defence to their attack that bypasses the midfield would generally register less xGBuildup on their midfielders as they're not really getting involved in the creation of chances, whereas players like Bernardo Silva, Gundogan, KDB would have crazy xGBuildup scores as they're more than likely to have played a key part in any shot City are likely to create. Teams with a more generic playstyle (like Watford) for instance will have a more diverse profile of midfielder that you can use to identify their role within the team. For instance if we compare Louza and Choudhury we can see that Louza has a better xGBuildup score which could likely mean any or a few of the following: A) he takes better decisions on the ball B) is better at moving the ball to the forwards C) plays further forward D) plays riskier passes etc Depends what you class as the best! For instance Choudhury had the highest (PAdj!) tackles + interceptions combined of all the CMs in the Championship last season, but we know (both from watching him and from the stats above) that he doesn't really contribute in any other way. So he'd be great if you want an out and out ball winner, but if you're after a midfielder to try and play constant through-balls to your striker he'd be very low down your list. I think the best option would be to look at "similar players" from the league which simply compares the plots against players playing in the same position, if we look at the CMs in the Championship last season (to play 900 mins or more) and compare them against Redondo for example then it says the following are the most similar players. So Rendondo is most like Hayden Hackney at Boro (who's earnt many plaudits for his season). Cullen ranks highly as well who's been one of the best "all rounders" this season in my eyes. Interesting that all the similar players come from Boro, Burnley or Swansea - the 3 sides who have dominated possession this season which would suggest Redondo would be a good fit for a high possession side. That being said these don't factor in league quality and there's other various factors to consider like how well a player would settle in to a new country, physicality, their personality and mentality and other details like that - recruitment is hard! And finally here's what our other CMs looked like stats wise. Kone really improved on his "creative" stats towards the end of the season and looks a solid matchup or backup for Louza if we wanted to dominate the ball more this season, although lacks a bit of defensive output with Kayembe being a bit more of a Choudhury deputy - worse defensive stats but slightly better in all round possession (Deep Progessions, xGBuildup + dribbles). Small sample sizes on TDB and Bacuna but both didn't really offer much in any aspect
Thanks ever so much reids. He's not the fastest out there on the pitch but he reads the game pretty well for his age. And he can although rarely carry the ball deep into the final third. I think he's got a few more levels to reach as he develops. He's very good at resisting the press as well although some of his passes in his own final third can look a little risky if the opposition watch him closely. But he'll learn. He had a great teacher in his dad and he's at one of the best academies in Argentina Argentinos Juniors. Should start tonight. How Tanlongo gets in ahead of him or Miramon beats me.
https://www.lequipe.fr/Football/Actualites/Rassoul-ndiaye-va-quitter-sochaux/1407250 Still interested apparently. Will end up at a Ligue 1 team.
