- 48 minutes ago
Newcastle United look set to make their first major signing in 2 seasons with the arrival of Anthony Elanga from Nottingham Forest. But after a season of deep defense and fast breaks, there are question marks over spending £55m on a player who looks, on paper, to be badly suited to Eddie Howe's more aggressive and methodical style of play.Adam Clery explains what it is Newcastle think they see in Elanga, and how they hope to get it out of him.
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00:00Right then, hello there pals, welcome back to Adam Cleary and his football channel and after 717 days, give or
00:09take, Newcastle United have finally signed a senior player for the first team.
00:14And yes, genuinely it has been that long, they've not had one since Harvey Barnes, but now Anthony Alanga has
00:20arrived and the sun is singing and the birds are shining or whatever you say.
00:25But why do the increasingly controlled and more methodical Newcastle United want to sign the poster boy for Nottingham Forest's,
00:34oh no possession for us thanks, we just do counter-attacks, brand of football.
00:39Now it is a weird one, I'll grant you, and it might not make immediate sense, but this is what
00:44the video is here to explain, so let's do that.
00:50Right then, Anthony Alanga, Swedish international, 23 years old, still funny, he's already mates with Alexander Isak, has half the
01:02Newcastle team already gassing him up on Instagram,
01:04and was the first signing to be made by the brand new director of football, William Asula.
01:11And you're no doubt thinking, well what sort of player is he Adam, well he's a piss rapid, wide forward,
01:17who can shoot with both feet, take players on down both sides,
01:21and he's got 20 Premier League assists over the last two seasons, which doesn't just put him third in the
01:26division, behind Salah and Watkins, which is pretty good,
01:30but ahead of Bakayo Saka, of Cole Palmer, of Bruno Fernandes, of Martin Erdegaard, of Kevin De Bruyne, and of
01:37Bruno, Gordon, Trippier and Murphy.
01:40But, but, but, but, and this is where the vibe of the video is going to start going all over
01:44the place, right,
01:44that kind of output puts him at 0.4 assists per 90 minutes in the Premier League, which if we
01:50look at his stats you can see,
01:51is amongst the very top creative output levels in the entire division.
01:56But the underlying numbers, like the key passes, the passes into the final third, the passes and crosses into the
02:01penalty area,
02:02and the telltale number for nerds like me, the expected number of assists,
02:08which is obviously designed to measure the quality of the chances he's making, rather than just how well they're being
02:13put away,
02:14they all take quite a massive draw.
02:17So, if you were looking at that data, and you were either in recruitment or coaching, you've worked for the
02:21Football Club,
02:22but the question you've got to ask is, is he really an elite level creator of chances, like the companies
02:28in here suggests,
02:30or is he just benefiting from his teammates finishing really well, and pumping up his numbers,
02:36making him look a lot better than he really is?
02:38And, well, yeah, it is actually probably the latter there.
02:42Forrest were the league's biggest over-performers in front of goal last season,
02:46and there's nothing either in his numbers, or when you watch him, that says,
02:50yeah, okay, he is on that level, he is unpicking defences and making things happen
02:56at a level few other players are capable of.
02:59And don't get me wrong, ultimately not being as good a creator as these players he's in with isn't the
03:04end of the world,
03:05he's certainly, when you look at the numbers, an above-average creator of chances,
03:10rather than, like, a really good or an elite one.
03:12But that description, above-average, should slightly concern you when you're about to spend £55 million on him
03:19and hope that he will immediately elevate your team in this area of the pitch.
03:24And, likewise, off the ball as well, which is really important to Newcastle United,
03:28when you start to look at those numbers, he's not someone who jumps out at you as being suited to
03:33how hard they work.
03:35Now, they actually make for pretty alarming reading if you start going down these.
03:39Like, he doesn't tackle frequently or overly successfully, he rarely intercepts the ball, he's not blocking shots.
03:45And, again, if you were working for Newcastle United and you're looking at his underlying numbers on the ball
03:50and his very obvious numbers off the ball,
03:53and someone is suggesting you spunk a massive chunk of your transfer budget right up the living room curtains
03:59to bring him in, you should have alarms going off in your head.
04:04And the thing is, even the style of play he's used to,
04:07and this has been the big one everyone's been talking about since the transfer got announced,
04:10seems a really bad fit.
04:12He really wants them, and this is why Sandro now plays at the 6th with Bruno further up,
04:16to be really patient and controlled and sort of disciplined as they move the ball between the phases.
04:22And this has meant that they're now better able to control and dictate the tempo of games,
04:27they're better able to manage their energy levels by being intense, yes,
04:31but doing it at certain times and in bursts and in a controlled way,
04:34and also just makes them a better, bigger, more possession-orientated side.
04:40And last season, Forrest playing in a league where City and Tottenham go long from goal kicks
04:4619% and 16% of the time, astonishingly low.
04:50They were still hanging on to the 1990s and proper football by doing it nearly 75% of the time.
04:59No bloody phases, no build-up, no anything like that.
05:02Just get it up the other end of the pitch and then we'll sort of figure it out when we
05:06get there.
05:06Newcastle, by the way, if you want to go back to that stat,
05:08third-lowest 22, so huge diametric opposites there.
05:14I don't know what I'm doing here.
05:15Forrest also, if you want to look, had the third-lowest possession in the division
05:18with their entire game plan to remain nice and solid at the back
05:22and then, as you no doubt saw every time they played,
05:25explode up the pitch with Gibbs-White, Hudson-Odoi and, of course, Alanga.
05:30So, like, on the face of it, this is a terrible fit.
05:34Like, the guy is tactically ill-suited to his new team.
05:36He's got really misleading numbers on the ball and just glaringly awful ones off the ball.
05:42And yet, and yet, Newcastle have been after him for two years now.
05:50He was a priority target for a team that, since the takeover,
05:55have not got a single major transfer wrong.
05:59So what the f*** is it they actually see here?
06:03Well, in short, it's the player he actually is underneath what the data shows you.
06:10Newcastle have identified Alanga as someone with the raw materials, as a footballer,
06:15that they can shape and mould into the perfect right-sided forward for this team.
06:21Like, they want a £100 million player here, but they can't afford to go and do that.
06:26So what you do instead is, just like you did with Bruno, like you did with Isak,
06:30like you did with Gordon, like you did with Bottman, like you did with Hall,
06:32is you go out and buy somebody who isn't that player yet,
06:34but has the sort of physical, mental and technical profile that, through coaching,
06:39you can get there.
06:41Now, personal opinion, I do not think this is an open goal of assigning.
06:47But based on the player Alanga is and what Newcastle want to do with him,
06:50I do think it represents world-class levels of talent identification.
06:57And I'll show you why.
06:58So first off, the one that everybody knows, he's absolutely rapid.
07:02Now, you will have seen his pace and his running in pretty much every single goal he's ever scored
07:06for Nottingham Forest, but what will have got Newcastle's attention specifically
07:10is not the pace and the running, but how he uses that pace and how he does that running.
07:17He's third in the Premier League for sprints per 90 minutes, doing 26.2 of them every single game.
07:27Anthony Gordon is top of that particular metric with 28.8, 28.8 sprints per 90.
07:38And the pair of them are actually joint top for the percentage of time spent sprinting in games.
07:43Like, nobody's doing more lungbusters, 5.1% of every single match, than these two.
07:50Which, yes, you're right, does mean Newcastle now have the most sprinting-est attack,
07:56if that's a word, in football.
07:59Which is mad.
08:00And the thing is as well, what he does with these runs is not something that translates into data.
08:06He is so naturally both-footed that he can go either way on defenders, inside, outside, down the left, down
08:13the right.
08:13It's nigh on impossible to predict what he's going to do.
08:16And the sheer speed he possesses means he doesn't even have to be that tricky or that technical to beat
08:23his man.
08:23If there's any space on the other side, 9 times out of 10, he has got you.
08:28Now, the thing is, I did just say 9 times out of 10, he will go past somebody into the
08:32space.
08:32But he actually has quite an alarmingly low percentage of successful dribbles.
08:37He's actually, technically on the data again, one of the worst in the league at going past players.
08:43And the thing is, while that stat's obviously a bit of a negative, I think that's actually a good reason
08:47to go and buy him.
08:48Because the raw ingredients are there.
08:49Like, the pace, the straight-line speed, the determination, the technical ability, all of that.
08:54He's got it, just right now, his completion numbers aren't that high.
08:58So if you're Newcastle, you work on that.
09:00You make him better at going past players, which should be pretty easy.
09:03He's only 23.
09:04And you may have yourself an absolutely unstoppable force on the ball.
09:10And his two-footedness means you've got lots of options with where you start him.
09:13Like, this is his total heat map for all of last season.
09:16I think he had 29 league starts down the right, then 7 up front, and 3 or 4 over on
09:21the left-hand side.
09:22But he will just go out there, even if you start him here, or if you bring him on as
09:26a sub,
09:26just to test the opposition full-back, to poke and probe and find gaps.
09:30Now, I do have one stat that actually is pretty good.
09:33Opta published this.
09:35Thank you, Opta.
09:35And it's every single shot Anthony Alanga has ever taken in the Premier League, right?
09:42And if you divide it up between his left-footed shots and his right-footed shots,
09:45it pretty much comes out at 60-40 right to left.
09:51And you can see as well from the locations of him, I'll get to him out of the way,
09:54he hasn't even really got a preferred zone.
09:57So defenders can't even necessarily do their homework on him.
10:00Like, oh, he's going to want to get into here and hit it with his left,
10:02or he's going to want to go there and hit it with his right.
10:05He will go anywhere with any foot.
10:07And that 60-40 is apparently the smallest gap between your strong foot and your weak foot
10:13of any player, again, I should have looked this up,
10:16to have played 1,000 minutes in sort of the last two seasons.
10:20To put that in English, he is the most two-footed player in the division.
10:25And that is really useful both in front of goal when you're getting snapshots away,
10:29but also in chance creation.
10:32Like, take these two examples, right?
10:33First, he goes with his right foot against his marker.
10:36It's a pretty, it's all right, decent ball.
10:38But the next time he gets it, the defender steps across to block any pass with the right foot,
10:43only for him to cut back, go with the left instead, and drop it right on someone's head.
10:49That is a goal created exclusively from his unpredictability.
10:54And right now, between Gordon always chopping inside,
10:57and Murphy being just a genuinely astounding crosser from the touchline,
11:01Newcastle don't really have that.
11:03You tend to know, when they get into the wide areas,
11:06what their players are going to do.
11:08And, final point, right?
11:09The play styles, because that's the thing everybody's talking about, right?
11:12How do you go from Forest, who just want to sit deep and counter-attack,
11:15to Newcastle, who really want that ball,
11:17and they want to dictate tempo and have a lot of possession?
11:20And, well, I've just been first off, look at last season,
11:22Newcastle only scored two less counter-attacking goals than Nottingham Forest,
11:25so they do still do that as well.
11:28But the difference is, while Newcastle don't want to sit back as deep and break as far up the pitch,
11:33they are still one of the best teams, probably in the world,
11:38at manufacturing a transition.
11:41You want to think of that as the difference between winning the ball back deliberately
11:44in key areas, so you can get at the opposition,
11:47versus just sitting really deep and hoping that when you do get it back,
11:51you can get up the other end of the pitch with the pacey players you've got.
11:54And they're obviously very different styles of play,
11:56but the thing they've got in common is that the most important thing to have
11:59when you do get that ball back is good reactions and immediate explosiveness.
12:05And right now, Alanga is reacting to these situations by using that explosiveness
12:10to carry the ball fully 60 or 70 yards up the other end of the pitch.
12:15But it's his ability to burst past a defender over like four or five yards,
12:20as opposed to 40 or 50, that Newcastle will see as the big appeal here,
12:25because that makes them so much more deadly when they've got that ball back.
12:28And while obviously he's never been part of a high-pressing structure at Nottingham Forest,
12:33I did manage to find a small moment in the FA Cup semi-final,
12:37which possibly suggests he could be.
12:40I don't think this is planned at all because of the way it pans out,
12:43but Alanga realises that they've got City boxed in
12:46and beckons his teammates repeatedly to push up with him.
12:52Vardyol comes wide and Alanga spots that O'Reilly is the best way out.
12:57And he goes across to make sure he cuts that pass off.
13:01It's not something you'd ever see in a statistic.
13:03He doesn't win the ball back.
13:05It's not a high pressure.
13:06You're not going to find a number to back this up.
13:08But when you watch it, that's him reading the game
13:11and having the sort of mindset and the determination to not let City out.
13:16And this small decision forces Vardyol to cut back, to lose the ball,
13:20and they should score from that.
13:23And yes, OK, this is not evident that he's a great presser or anything like that.
13:27But again, it shows that the raw ingredients might be there
13:30for Newcastle to turn him into one.
13:33That's what they're spending the money on.
13:35So yes, is £55 million for Anthony Alanga the best transfer in the history of the world?
13:40Absolutely not.
13:41It is fraught with risk and guarantees absolutely nothing.
13:44But I think if this works on the training ground,
13:48if they have got the player they think they've got,
13:50it will eventually look like one of the best transfers you've ever seen.
13:54It's just hard to say right now what's going to happen.
13:57But I mean, let's be real here.
13:58After like two entire years of no major first team additions,
14:01just nice to see somebody you've heard of wearing the shirt, isn't it?
14:04So Newcastle United fans, let me know in the comments below.
14:07Are you buzzing about this?
14:08I think we're doing better spending the money elsewhere.
14:10All thoughts, feelings, poetry verse, comment and insight.
14:14Welcome in the little box down below.
14:16And while you're here, if you haven't already,
14:17why not subscribe to us at ACFC.
14:20I think I've only done one Newcastle video,
14:22which is the Carabao Cup final, before this.
14:24But we'll probably buy some more players and we'll have lots of matches.
14:28So there'll be loads more Newcastle United content.
14:30Brought to you by me and Newcastle United content, man.
14:34Who you can, of course, also get across all the social medias
14:37at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y,
14:39where I'll no doubt be moaning about the team selection,
14:40whoever we buy, when the season comes around.
14:43And that's it.
14:45That's everything I meant to tell you, I think.
14:47Yes, it is.
14:47Thank you for joining me.
14:48It's incredibly hot in here.
14:49I desperately need a glass of water.
14:50And to fan myself.
14:53So, au revoir, lads and lasses.
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