Celtic's Luis Palma could benefit from a positional change

Luis Palma has been characterised as one of the few ‘successes’ of the summer transfer window and has settled into being a regular pick in Brendan Rodgers’ side, as a left winger.

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Excluding the Heart of Midlothian tie from last weekend (we’d all like to do that) I’ve plugged him into the same analysis performed for Yang. Palma has the equivalent of 11.21 90 minutes played. Let us start with the creative threat.

Chance Creation

This plot includes passes into the danger zone with expected assists per 90 minutes from open play. A slight wrinkle in this is that danger zone passes are ALL passes, including those from corners.

Of the 34 chances Palma has created this season, 10 have come directly from free-kick or corner passes. 24 are therefore from open play. Interestingly all six of his assists have come from open play.

The expected assists number IS open play passes only and despite five of his six assists resulting in big chances (usually have larger xA), he has a low average xA per chance created compared to last season's wingers.

It is therefore a bit of a mixed bag. When he is good (pass leads to a goal) he is very good – they are mainly big chances. But otherwise, outside of that the chances he provides are of lower quality. Nine (out of 24) of them resulted in headers and eight were shots outside the box. Neither is going to generally yield high xG shots.

This tends to also highlight a move away from more careful and targeted low-hard crosses, versus simply hoofing it into the box - my current bugbear.

Individual player style or system?

Goal Threat

Again, I’ve taken out penalties, which account for three of Palma’s seven goals. If I want to measure penalty taking, I’ll compare penalty takers. If Liam Scales took penalties, it wouldn’t necessarily make him a good goal threat in general play. Whilst it is great to see someone who may become a reliable penalty taker (who has missed one) that isn’t the skill being assessed here.

Outside of penalties an xG90 of 0.29 is probably a little bit short of the 0.35 – 0.4 that would be excellent for a Celtic wide forward. Peak James Forrest, Scott Sinclair, even younger Mikey Johnston, Abada and Jota all achieved that range and more.

So - as with the creativity - he’s closer than Yang, but still short of the levels normally seen at the club.

Deep Creativity

Here we plot the pack passing score with the xA generated from secondary assisting passes.

These are more encouraging numbers. Compared to Jota he takes more players out of the game with forward passes and has more of an influence on helping shape build up, leading to a shot.

When you watch Palma on the wing and see that it is not natural for him to go outside his defender on the left, and given this data, it speaks to me that perhaps, like Sead Haksabanovic, Palma may profile better as a number ten than as an out and out winger.

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Given his explosive shooting potential, it would be better if he was attempting those efforts from central than the wide situations he often attempts from. His relative lack of pace is also an issue, but it can be managed. Moving on to defending…

Defending

As before this includes defensive action success rate, possession won from defensive actions and finally pressures applied per 90 minutes.

Once again, it is a mixed picture.

His overall defensive action success is slightly lower than Jota’s levels, but there is a spike whereby his pressures are only just over one a game less than Maeda’s.  His defensive numbers are dampened by the number of times he is challenged and loses the ball in the final third (see below). This speaks to decision-making – dribbles versus pass – and to not having that top-end pace to unsettle defenders.

However, it was noticeable in the home game against Hibernian, that he had eight interceptions which is way above the average of about one per 90 minutes for his position at Celtic. So, like Yang, there is clearly potential there within a more structured and cohesive off-the-ball defending model.

Wastefulness

This is becoming my new favourite toy as it is quite revealing.

Palma unfortunately outlies with our beleaguered Yang. No one has come close to the level of losing the ball in the final third as much as Yang and Palma is worse on 10.08. He is dispossessed slightly less. When Rodgers talks about “quality” it is a euphemism for many aspects but here is an example where there is a deficit. He also gives away more passes (11.51) than any of this sample group.

High values here (not good) would be acceptable if accompanied by extremely high creativity and scoring productivity. But it isn’t as we have seen above. The only criteria by which Palma exceeds Jota is in deeper creative play, and in pressing.

Summary

Palma undoubtedly has utility as a creative force albeit his levels of productivity fall well short of last season's cadre of wide forwards.

It strikes me that because his creative and deeper passing profiles well, and because he clearly has a ferocious shot filled with action on the ball, and that his pressing data is up there with Maeda, he profiles more like a number ten than a winger. This is exacerbated by both his one footedness which serves to limit the pitch space he can operate in, and his lack of pace.

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Of the group sampled, he has the highest pack receive score (95.17) of those wide players. This means he is good at getting into space to receive the ball. Imagine if he wasn’t partially marked by the touchline and could wander centrally to build the play. I would advocate for him to be tried at the top of a midfield box or diamond as the player closest to the two strikers (I would go with Maeda and Kyogo Furuhashi).

So, unlike Yang, I see a path to usefulness for Palma, though probably not as an out-and-out wide forward.