"Replacing" Wijnaldum - The Aggregate
Okay, right off the bat I want to say that is one of those Sid-talks-about-niche-stuff threads, such as the co-efficient. I have a purpose in mind for it and it isn't to dissect transfer policy, FSG in/out, net spend and so on. Hopefully that can remain largely out of here.
There was a lot of discussion over the Summer about replacing Gini. Some (myself included) see Thiago as the replacement, having been acquired in anticipation of Gini's departure with a view to slightly evolving our play. Others feel Thiago was an addition to the midfield and that we should replace the outgoing player. I'm not here to debate that, in this thread at least.
What I am here to look at is our midfielders and the clocking up of appearances - ideally high-performance ones of course - but mainly the numbers.
In the 20/21 season Wijnaldum played as follows in the two "main" competitions -
Appearances total(ALL comps) - 51
Premier League - 38
Champion's League - 9
I haven't broken down the League Cup or FA Cup appearances as they tend to be subject to much heavier rotation to include Youth players, plus to be fair Gini made 47 of those 51 appearances in the two "major" tournaments anyway, so they are where the vast majority of the loss is.
The key figure I am looking at is the 51 appearances - which is a lot and a huge credit to what Gini achieved. So far as I see it, given that Wijnaldum (Thiago debate aside) wasn't replaced during the Summer, we have to "find" those appearances from within the camp.
We have 8 midfielders* in the squad -
Fabinho
Thiago
Milner
Keita
Henderson
Ox
Jones
Elliott
*given Klopp's recent use of Elliott
Some of the players will have to outperform last season's appearances quota to make up for the loss of the 51 appearances, but for a few of them, this shouldn't actually prove to be too difficult. 51 divided by 8 works out at 6.3, so we're really looking at getting an average of 6.3 extra appearances out of the players listed below.
So let's look at the all comps appearances and League appearances for 20/21 from that list -
Fabinho - 42 - 30
Thiago - 30 - 24
Milner - 36 - 26
Keita - 16 - 10
Henderson - 28 - 21
Ox - 17 - 13
C. Jones - 34 - 24
Elliott - 0 - 0
Three games in -
Elliott (came on as a sub v Norwich, started v Burnley and Chelsea) is already (understandably!) on +3 appearances over last season and looks very likely to reach at least 10 appearances in all comps. Bearing in mind the target is 6.3, he'll almost certainly achieve that and more - and if it is indeed more, it's a few less that must be "found" for another player, such as Fabinho or Milner, who played a lot last season.
Keita (starts against Norwich and Burnley) has already made 20% of last season's total League appearances (10) and an eight of his total of 16 appearances.
They're two examples - but you get the idea - being able to "find" these appearances doesn't look at all implausible to me. There are caveats of course - injury luck, suspensions, Covid, some of the appearances might be poor - but we'll see how it plays out.
Anyway, long+short of it is that this thread will give me a place where I can quickly list/update some of the appearances of our midfielders this season every few games and by the end of the season we'll likely have one source of (rudimentary) data as to how much/little Wijnaldum needs "replacing" in the side come the end of the season, or whether we were "fine" without him.
Your hobbies are rollerblading and you're also a bit of a rat-hound? Steel Wool
Sid knows he's crazy and he likes it. Balinkay
Bookmarks