Chelsea Transfers

[Vesper 28,763]

4 hours ago, ZAPHOD2319 said:

 

 

[jandomi10 82]

Chelsea are willing to offer Gallagher plus cash to secure Ollie Watkins this summer. {Football Insider}

[LAM09 6,742]

1 hour ago, jandomi10 said:

Chelsea are willing to offer Gallagher plus cash to secure Ollie Watkins this summer. {Football Insider}

Villa have signed Barkley & are on the verge of (overpaying, IMO) for Onana. I can't see them wanting another midfielder.

[Magic Lamps 11,653]

11 minutes ago, LAM09 said:

Villa have signed Barkley & are on the verge of (overpaying, IMO) for Onana. I can't see them wanting another midfielder.

Yup that rumour is defo a non starter. We are never gonna get watkins at this stage  

[LAM09 6,742]

11 minutes ago, Magic Lamps said:

Yup that rumour is defo a non starter. We are never gonna get watkins at this stage  

Exactly. It's convenient how this "interest" comes about days after he scored. 

Anything for clicks. 

[Pizy 18,368]

Gallagher seems more and more likely to stay at this point. The two main English clubs he was linked with earlier this summer have signed midfielders. Villa signed Barkley & Onana and Spuds signed Archie Gray.

Only other PL club I could picture going for him now would be Newcastle.

But keeping him would be nonsensical with the midfielders we now have. With Lavia and Chukwameka now hopefully fit PLUS Enzo, Caicedo, and KDH there really isn’t any place for CG.

 

[Reddish-Blue 2,344]

1 hour ago, Pizy said:

there really isn’t any place for CG

CG will get minutes anyway considering his fitness is probably the best in the first team squad. 

 

[LAM09 6,742]

2 hours ago, Pizy said:

Gallagher seems more and more likely to stay at this point. The two main English clubs he was linked with earlier this summer have signed midfielders. Villa signed Barkley & Onana and Spuds signed Archie Gray.

Only other PL club I could picture going for him now would be Newcastle.

But keeping him would be nonsensical with the midfielders we now have. With Lavia and Chukwameka now hopefully fit PLUS Enzo, Caicedo, and KDH there really isn’t any place for CG.

 

Weren't Liverpool interested in him at one point & Thiago/Matip have both left the club. I wouldn't say anything is a foregone conclusion until the window shuts.

[Vesper 28,763]

11 hours ago, Mhsc said:

Is anyone reliable peddling the "Alvarez has decided to leave" story?

The Sun

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/29188220/julian-alvarez-demands-man-city-transfer/

 

(I am having a laugh with 'reliable')

🤣

[Vesper 28,763]

6 hours ago, Pizy said:

Gallagher seems more and more likely to stay at this point. The two main English clubs he was linked with earlier this summer have signed midfielders. Villa signed Barkley & Onana and Spuds signed Archie Gray.

Only other PL club I could picture going for him now would be Newcastle.

But keeping him would be nonsensical with the midfielders we now have. With Lavia and Chukwameka now hopefully fit PLUS Enzo, Caicedo, and KDH there really isn’t any place for CG.

 

Atletico Madrid

[Vesper 28,763]

Désiré Doué: before the big move

The definitive SCOUTED50 profile on Stade Rennais' latest academy gem.

https://www.scoutednotebook.com/p/scouted50-desire-doue

SCOUTED50 is our collection of the fifty young talents we believe are best positioned to break into the mainstream during 2023/24. Throughout the season, we’ll be detailing all fifty in definitive profiles.

Read the full list here. Désiré Doué came 12th in our ranking.

 

This profile was produced as part of a commercial collaboration with SkillCorner, SCOUTED’s official data partner. SkillCorner’s tracking and performance data is used by more than 150 of the world’s biggest clubs, leagues and confederations. Learn more.

All stats correct as of 1/7/2024 unless otherwise noted.

At Stade Rennais, if you're good enough, you're old enough. The French club have a strong youth academy set-up that has enabled them to consistently maintain their position somewhere between mid-table and European places.

And when I say ‘strong’, I mean it. Jeanuël Belocian, Lesley Ugochukwu, Georginio Rutter, Mathys Tel, and, of course, Eduardo Camavinga headline their best products in the last five or so years. The problem for Rennes, however, is that they haven't really been able to maximise a fee for any.

They’ll be looking to remedy that with their next budding young starlet: Désiré Doué.

Doué is of the same 2005 vintage as Tel, first catching my eye when I watched him in the UEFA U-17 European Championship in 2022, amongst a stacked French team that also included Warren Zaïre-Emery. The French won that tournament, Tel moved to Bayern München, Zaïre-Emery became an established first-teamer at Paris Saint-Germain, and now Doué is on the precipice of a big move this summer.

In between that U-17 EURO and now, Doué has steadily developed with Rennes. That can be best explained in his uptick in minutes, moving from around 1,400 in his debut professional season in 2022/23, to about 2,400 in 2023/24.

That’s almost 4,000 minutes of senior football before turning 19 — which he did earlier this June.

All of this has lead to murmurs of a move abroad. In the bits I’ve seen of him before sitting down to put together this profile, I’m not fully convinced he could handle it yet. But I’m coming to this with fresh eyes, having seen very little of him since the aforementioned U-17 EURO.

Alright, let’s get straight into it.

---

In this profile:

• What does ‘Premier League ready’ even mean? A breakdown

• A winger whose future might lie in midfield

• An über-talented wildcard who takes risks - and pulls them off

• Some of the most bizarre stats Steve’s ever seen

• Concentration issues mean it’s not quite clicking - yet

 

ESTABLISHING ‘READINESS’

‘Premier League ready’ is one of my favourite things people say. What does it even mean? I think most who use it don’t really know.

For me, it’s all about athleticism. The Premier League stands alone amongst Europe’s top-five leagues in that category.

In the aggregate, the difference between the Premier League and Ligue 1, sampled against all of Europe’s top-five leagues, looks like this:

Pretty much every athletic attribute linked to intensity features the Premier League at the top.

We know Doué - who seems almost predestined to move to the Premier League at this point - is precociously talented with the ball, but can he mix it athletically with the Premier Leagues best?

Here’s how he compares to top-five league wingers. This isn’t the most convincing profile, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind here. Firstly, is he your long term fit as a winger or as a midfielder/attacking midfielder? And secondly, he just turned 19 years old this June — there’s plenty of potential for development.

There are only three players born in 2005 that actually hit the eight games of 60+ minutes played in this sample: Assane Diao, Lamine Yamal, and Doué.

Unfortunately, his midfielder sample size is very small (we’ve got six games with 45+ minutes played). But, with the necessary sample size caveats, he seems to get much closer to a standard that could ‘fit’ the Premier League.

Interestingly, his overall output when playing both positions is actually quite similar. The main difference is that the physical demands on a Premier League winger are massive.

As a thought experiment, I thought it would be interesting to plot Doué alongside some very good Premier League wingers who we probably wouldn’t consider as athletes first.

Still, Michael Olise, Cole Palmer, and Phil Foden all outrank Doué in just about every metric amongst wingers in Europe’s top-five leagues, and they’re above average in most metrics too.

It must be constantly reiterated that the standard is so, so high — hitting on a big Premier League transfer is therefore extremely difficult, and that difficulty becomes greater when signing teenagers.

To dig a little deeper into this topic, go read my piece from a couple of months ago about the athletic development that has allowed players like Jérémy Doku to succeed in Ligue 1.

 

Ligue 1: How to build (and sell) a superstar

STEPHEN GANAVAS

·

MAY 8

Read full story

---

But keep everything we’ve talked about here in mind as we continue. The stats used from now will all be winger stats, but remember playing in midfield is an option for Doué, and may even be his best fit at a higher level.

Before we move on — and looking past pure running stats to think about his athletic profile as a whole — I think Doué already looks like a pretty robust physical competitor. He is tenacious and Pit bull-ish, and surprisingly powerful through the core and legs when compared to similarly aged contemporaries (someone like Gianluca Prestianni, who I profiled in November, springs to mind).

I think his overall athletic profile gives him a good foundation to establish himself at senior level, contrasting with Prestianni, who has struggled enormously to find his footing at Benfica since his January move.

HIT-AND-MISS

I think Doué’s hugely talented, but possesses some key deficiencies.

The elite players in his position set themselves apart by taking lots of touches, receiving more pressure, while still retaining the ball. Doué holds up part of that bargain - taking touches and receiving pressure - but struggles to scale his efficiency with retaining possession alongside the extra responsibility.

(Please bear in mind that these numbers are for each players’ appearances as a winger, so someone like Jude Bellingham features despite not playing the majority of his matches in this position. All the players in the graph below were born after January 1, 2003.)

The names in the top right quadrant speak for themselves: Matías Soulé, Florian Wirtz, Jude Bellingham, Xavi Simons, Jamal Musiala and Rayan Cherki. The only one of those you wouldn’t put in the elite youngster category is Cherki, and that’s much more to do with athletic qualities than technical deficiencies. Ayman Kari sneaks in too, although he’s a bit of a different profile: he usually plays midfield/attacking midfield as one of the two in a 3-4-2-1 formation.

Doué is a very strange case. While ranking quite low for ball retention ratio under pressure as a whole, he ranks much closer to top-five league average (and average against his age group contemporaries) for ball retention under high pressure.

To plot it all out and simplify it into a table with percentiles, here are his rankings for ball retention ratio under all three levels of pressure, compared to all wingers in Europe’s top five leagues:

 

I see this and actually approach it with some positive sentiment. He clearly has the capability to execute under high pressure. If he can do that, then surely he should be able to be more efficient when facing lesser amounts of pressure.

Stepping into some footage and refreshing my memory on Doué, I think there are some interesting concepts to latch onto to start to contextualise what all this means.

Firstly, he is a damaging player and he takes risks. Sometimes, I think he probably leans towards being over-aggressive in some of those risks, especially as a passer. But he has insane confidence in his technical ability, and for good reason.

He can ping ridiculous passes to spark transitions, and is constantly looking for the direct ball between the lines whenever he can face forward and run at the midfield line. At 19, that is why you put Doué in your team: because he is an über-talented wildcard who will attempt things nobody else can.

He brings such a nice blend of passing, ball carrying and dribbling that gives him so many avenues to disrupt defensive structures, although I think the wide role can be limiting in what it allows him to do as a passer. He is excellent on both sides of his body, and when you see him get into central spaces it feels like so many angles open up for him.

You can probably start to see me leaning towards him playing his best football as an attacking midfielder, rather than as a wide player.

There are risks associated with this, especially with Rennes playing a more controlled style compared to much of Ligue 1, but there are big potential rewards too.

THE CASE FOR MIDFIELD DEVELOPMENT

Doué is an easier fit for most clubs on the wing. The erratic nature of what he does in possession is masked more easily from a defensive standpoint. He can take his risks as a passer, and not expose his teams to counter-attacks. But the ceiling for him as a midfielder definitely feels higher, although it will take more time to blossom into.

Firstly, he already wants to be drawn towards the ball. He is not giving you the two-pronged threat as a winger in quick transitions alongside slow build-up. Part of that is probably because he doesn’t have the breakneck speed to create separation as a wide player anyway, so he doesn’t really lean into that as a core part of his game. But the other aspect is that he really likes getting on the ball.

If we look at a broad view of all his different types of runs to see where he ranks for different types of runs amongst top-five league wingers, you can see the pattern.

He ranks very low for the ‘attacking’ runs (in behind, cross receiver), and below average for the types of runs you would associate with receiving as the player moving into space in transition (ahead of the ball, pulling wide). Conversely, he ranks higher for underlap runs, overlap runs, and support runs (running from behind the line of the ball carrier). This is the archetype of a creative player.

As someone who can dribble, pass and shoot at a high level, is his influence simply being nullified when camped out on the wing?

TRIPLE THREAT

Not many players have the triple threat — elite shooting, dribbling and passing. While Doué is not quite there yet, you can see the potential. I think the ball-striking is already a big tick, although his shooting volume is fairly low.

The dribbling is already there. He holds up well physically under pressure, and has lots of subtle moves to go both ways, and when he is already on the move can fake out defenders to slalom past them. It’s not necessarily the isolation stuff I am focussed on here, but rather his propensity to slither through the middle third on the run.

His passing is still very erratic. I noted before he can hit some really crazy passes, but he can also flub very easy ones.

This has to be one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen. This directly feeds into the ball retention under pressure numbers I showed from earlier, with Pass Completion Ratio Under Pressure being one of the core fundamentals of that stat.

It’s almost as if, the more difficult the pass, the more efficient Doué becomes.

Note: Difficult passes are passes that are expected to be completed less than 65% of the time

I’ve not yet seen any other player like this when trawling through SkillCorner’s data. Dangerous pass under pressure completion ratios? Same thing.

 

Honestly, these numbers have me fully believing that this is just a major concentration issue. If he was as good as he looks in his Twitter comps, he would be winning the Ballon d’Or - but there’s clearly something not quite clicking with his game at a fundamental level.

He is very flashy, and sometimes veers into the ‘trying to do too much’ category; a player that dwells on the ball just a little too much, who could benefit by playing as instinctively as a passer as he does as a dribbler. More senior minutes, more time watching film, and more focus on every single touch and pass is the antidote.

ELEVATING

Doué is poised for the biggest stages, but I think he still needs to bubble away at this level for a little while longer.

While he is an amazing prospect, there's a good reason why he’s not a locked-in starter for Stade Rennais every week: he doesn't yet bring guarantees.

When he’s good, he can singlehandedly take over a game and win it off his own boot. But we’ve not seen that at senior level as frequently as we did at youth international level. That’s to be expected, but hopefully with time he can start to bring such decisiveness with greater regularity.

But it might be time for everyone to pump the brakes. A big club buying him now won't be getting a value proposition, and getting development minutes into him won't be easy. I can't see any reason for him to move anywhere. Stay in Rennes, continue the year-on-year development, and the move will still be there for you: think Benjamin Šeśko’s recent contract renewal.

Until then, we wait patiently to see Doué blossom into a true difference-maker in the right role at the highest level. He's got a high ceiling, he just needs to raise the floor.

We have loads of stuff coming up in the Summer of SCOUTED, including more SCOUTED50 profiles like the one before this one. It featured Chelsea’s Cesare Casadei, who has the makings of a game-breaking midfielder.

 

Cesare Casadei: a midfielder with the buried soul of a nine

STEPHEN GANAVAS

·

JUN 14

Read full story

[ulvhedin 507]

Was there any list of players who are currently training with Maresca?

I am curious which group is Matos training with? And what about Ugochukwu - there were reports he is dropped from olympics team, but later there were news he is still with France team? 

 

[Pizy 18,368]

14 minutes ago, ulvhedin said:

Was there any list of players who are currently training with Maresca?

I am curious which group is Matos training with? And what about Ugochukwu - there were reports he is dropped from olympics team, but later there were news he is still with France team? 

 

Noticed a couple of players who haven’t reported back yet. Haven’t seen pics of Ugochukwu or Marc Guiu yet. 

[ulvhedin 507]

10 minutes ago, Pizy said:

Noticed a couple of players who haven’t reported back yet. Haven’t seen pics of Ugochukwu or Marc Guiu yet. 

any reports of Matos?

[whats happening 1,525]

been really quiet in the last couple of weeks.

[guddy69 174]

12 hours ago, Vesper said:

Atletico Madrid

hopefully 

[Pizy 18,368]

1 hour ago, whats happening said:

been really quiet in the last couple of weeks.

Mate, we’ve made like 4 signings in the past couple of weeks. 🤣🤣🤣

[ZAPHOD2319 4,476]