Leeds United Chat • Re: Dan James
Their is no getting away from his league creative stats for us being less than 1 chance created per game is shocking for a winger, you can't defend that it is appalling.
Furthermore it doesn't improve much at Manure (1 chance per 87 minutes) and his overall Premier league record is 1 a game almost exactly (1 every 93mins).
So I went back and looked at the article The Athletic did when we signed him, they used a similar analytical tool to the one we use for real (yes a lot of scouting is now done by IT departments).
And as expected it is off the ball and defensively where James shines.
Sprints per game, pressures per game, sprinting distances, ball recoveries, tackles, interceptions etc etc.
All that lovely defensive and off the ball stuff.
And then as we go down the article we see where does Dan James struggle as an attacking player? Erm attacking.
Chance creation, ball progression, attacking things.
Dan James is a winger whose the absolute definition of a tunnel visioned sprinter.
Look at that screenshot tonight, it was like Dan James summed up in 1 picture.
Head down and run as fast as you can.
That was the opinion of him I had when he arrived (and many other fans expressed the same view).
Buying attacking players whose biggest strength is the defensive skills is a rather strange thing, after all you would never buy a centre back because he takes a great penalty.
Its well known Bielsa gets obsessed with certain players and its pretty obvious James was one (I know some of our fans take umbrage to this implication but it's a fact).
And he will have got very very excited by those defensive and running stats (he didnt think Lang or De Paul had the defensive skills incidentally according to Phil).
The funny thing though is you can coach players to be fitter, you can coach players to run more, you can coach players to press more, you can coach players to do all that lovely defensive and off the ball stuff.
You cant coach vision, you cant coach technique, you can't coach a creative brain, all the things an attacking player needs can't be coached, either you got it or you don't.
But Bielsa (who loves to coach) wants the players who have the abilities that can be coached over the vital abilities for attacking players that can't really?
It's a rather strange thing when you think about it.
However this really long post is really about me saying I am concerned about James, I was really concerned when we signed him (despite trying to be positive in various posts about him) and I am getting more concerned.
I just don't see what Bielsa does.
I am really uncomfortable with buying attacking players because of off the ball skills (Rodrigo was similar incidentally) all that off the ball stuff he was good he just didn't score much.
Apologise for the length of this but I was really shocked by Dan James stats.
Feel better now