Players who might improve us

I seem to remember reading that statistically, Edouard is the closest (or one of) player to Agüero in Europe (barring Agüero himself obviously).

If that's true I'll go to Glasgow myself and get the negotiations underway. Of the little I've seen of Celtic, he's been outstanding. And I read something quoting 50m. We could definitely get that down a bit. 35 with add ons? Pretty sure they've got a shortlist of replacements. Young, hungry for a chance and apparently statistically similar to our legend. Makes sense.
 
If that's true I'll go to Glasgow myself and get the negotiations underway. Of the little I've seen of Celtic, he's been outstanding. And I read something quoting 50m. We could definitely get that down a bit. 35 with add ons? Pretty sure they've got a shortlist of replacements. Young, hungry for a chance and apparently statistically similar to our legend. Makes sense.
Never seen the guy play, but he is also tall enough to in theory give us some aerial presence in games like yesterday where we resort to endless crosses
 
He’d be a big gamble but I like him. He won’t get the time and space in the box that he gets for Celtic but at least he’s used to playing with the majority of the ball, plus his goal scoring record for Celtic and France’s youth sides is pretty incredible.

For Celtic: 62 goals, 126 games
For France (u17-u21): 35 goals, 40 games

This is what I was previously referring to:
https://smarterscout.com/articles/p...ish-premiership-sergio-aguero-manchester-city

Odsonne Edouard is the replacement for Sergio Aguero
You can hardly envy the executives at City Football Group tasked with finding a successor to Sergio Aguero. The 31-year-old talisman has scored in the majority of his appearances in the Premier League during eight out of his nine seasons at Manchester City. Where could Txiki Begiristain and company unearth another 180-goal striker? At last, we think we know.

Not that it's been an easy search. In addition to an incredible scoring record, Aguero has a playing style that's hard to replicate. City were on the right track with Gabriel Jesus, but somehow the mercurial Brazilian never carried the same weight in the lineup as the stocky Argentine – and so the search continued. Well, Odsonne Edouard may be about to change all of that.

Edouard, in case you haven't heard, is a French U21 international and smarterscout young prospect who's been leading Celtic's charge to another Scottish Premiership title, with 19 goals and 9 assists across 22 appearances. His attacking output is already extremely high by a Premier League standard, and he contributes a fair amount as a defender as well. He's an average dribbler for a Premier League striker and an excellent finisher. Even during Celtic's unsuccessful Champions League campaign, Edouard still managed attacking output for the Premier League. At 1.87m, the only area where he disappoints is in the air:

1580958737-oe0.png


You can see Edouard's steady improvement across all competitions in his attacking numbers, and he still has several years to go before he's likely to reach his peak as a striker. If we take a look at the Statistics panel of his profile, we can see where some of that improvement has come from. His shot quality has been similar over the past two seasons, but he's been getting more involved in the most dangerous attacking moves while on the pitch:

1580958970-oe1.png


Edouard's average shot quality would be even better if he didn't shoot from the GK's left quite as often. In the smartermap below, you can see that he often starts off in his left channel, making short passes to link up with his teammates before running into the box to receive the ball and shoot. His diagonal runs can take him pretty far across the goal, but he still finishes those wide shots at a relatively high rate:

1580958913-oe2.png


We've been tracking Edouard for some time in the Scottish Premiership data that we keep for private clients. We wanted to see which Premier League strikers had a similar style to Edouard in the past several seasons, so we fired up the "Search by similar player" feature on the site – and then our jaws hit the floor:

1580959189-oe3.png


Physically they may not resemble each other much, but Edouard and Aguero have had very similar playing styles in terms of the metrics we track. Only five out of the 200 closest matches for Edouard in our entire database came from the Premier League, and three of them were Aguero. Here's a side-by-side comparison showing just how close they are:

1580959311-oe4.png


Both players are outstanding target men, but both are also prolific link-up passers and dribblers. And both recover a lot of balls for a striker, too. The main differences are Edouard's aggressiveness as a defender and his ball retention, which is lower by a Premier League standard.

Maybe we shouldn't be surprised by these similarities. Before he left Celtic, Brendan Rodgers instituted a style of play that mimicked the City Football Group philosophy almost to a fault – his teams used a huge amount of build-up play, with moves made up of countless passes, and pressed avidly for ball recoveries as well. In half a year at the helm, Neil Lennon hasn't done too much to change that winning formula. So in some ways, Edouard has already been groomed to play the style that Pep Guardiola and his bankrollers prefer. It shouldn't be a question of whether they sign Edouard – it should be when.

 
A risk on bale could be taken perhaps. When Aguero leaves in an year, we could reevaluate our position and sign younger players.

By next year many teams with limited financial resources might be forced to sell star players and we could take advantage of it then.

A quality cb and a tall striker should be the first on the priority list
 
Arkadiusz Milik is another striker I feel could improve us. Napoli seems willing to sell after failing to make the CL
 
Alexander Isak

Natural finisher, tall (almost 6'4), very technical and got an elite first touch, fast, completely two footed, excellent movement. He's a very smart player with excellent mentality. Plays like a little bit less skillfull Henry or Eto'o while being 192cm tall



Here is every touch of his performance against Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu where he single handedly knocked them out of Copa del Rey pretty much by himself. 2 wondergoals, 1 assist, Odegaard scored his rebound for the first goal and even had a nice goal dissalowed for offside. I feel like Pep could bring out such performances a bit more frequently because the talent is there to show
 
Alexander Isak

Natural finisher, tall (almost 6'4), very technical and got an elite first touch, fast, completely two footed, excellent movement. He's a very smart player with excellent mentality. Plays like a little bit less skillfull Henry or Eto'o while being 192cm tall



Here is every touch of his performance against Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu where he single handedly knocked them out of Copa del Rey pretty much by himself. 2 wondergoals, 1 assist, Odegaard scored his rebound for the first goal and even had a nice goal dissalowed for offside. I feel like Pep could bring out such performances a bit more frequently because the talent is there to show

Really like him
 

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