Lucas Paquetá will reportedly join West Ham United before the end of the transfer window. As Liverpool hunt for midfielders, why not Paquetá?
The BBC, among others, report that West Ham United will sign Lucas Paquetá from Lyon this week. They’ll pay around £36.5m for the privilege of getting a highly accomplished midfielder.
But it’s an interesting one. The fee looks cheap for a player as good as Paquetá and Liverpool reportedly want one of those right now. Jurgen Klopp admitted it outright ahead of the Bournemouth game.
“I know we have had this discussion since it all started and I am the one who said we don’t need a midfielder and I was wrong. That’s the situation,” Klopp said, per the Telegraph. “But the specific point doesn’t change – we will do something but it has to be the right one. We will see.”
So Liverpool want the ‘right’ midfielder. Why isn’t that Paquetá?
Liverpool ignore Lucas Paquetá transfer
Statistically, Paquetá looks like a dream – no matter what kind of player you consider him to be. He stands out as an attacking midfielder, an out-and-out midfielder and even a forward.
That’s primarily because his game is so well-rounded. FBref uses Statsbomb data to rate a player by position. They compare stats across Europe’s top-five leagues and rank each into a percentile, again by position.
And so if you judge Paquetá as a midfielder, he’s an incredibly productive attacking one. He’s 99th percentile for non-penalty expected goals and for overall shots. 98th percentile xG assisted and for shot-creating action. 97th percentile for non-penalty goals.
He’d be 99th for dribbles and progressive passes received, 86th for pressing per 90. 77th for tackling.
But consider Paquetá to be an attacking midfielder and his passing stats leap up. He’d become 90th percentile for overall passes, while his tackling is in the 99th. His pressing is then in the 90th.
The point is that no matter how you look at Paquetá, he excels at doing the things Liverpool love. He creates a lot, moves the ball forward at every opportunity and puts in fantastic defensive work. Play him in midfield and he does one set of things brilliantly, move him forward and he does another.
Hence the questions, then. What don’t Liverpool like here? Because £36m for all of this is a bargain. We can only imagine that the Reds are after a very specific type of midfield player.
Our gues is they want a deeper midfielder, someone who can beat the first line of opposition press. Paquetá is more of a player for beating the second or third – essentially, the role Liverpool want Harvey Elliott and Fabio Carvalho playing.
That’s surely why they’re ignoring Paquetá and looking elsewhere.
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