Staring Down the Barrel of the Championship, Part Four: Starting the Rebuild — the Pointy End
Wingers/Creative Midfielders
Like the FB positions, this is dependent on how easily we’re able to move on our existing players and should really operate on a one-in, one-out basis.
The outstanding wide player outside of the top two divisions this season is almost certainly Charlie Kirk(22), who has been a creative dynamo for his Crewe side.
Kirk wracks up 2.2 key passes per 90 (6th among wingers and 10s, but he’s played almost twice as many minutes as everyone above him other than Nicky Adams of Northampton), passes the ball 33.9 times per 90 (3rd for total passes — again practically double the minutes of everyone else in the top 10), and has provided 13 assists, comfortably more than anyone else in his position.
He’s also chipped in with 6 goals from his 2.5 shots per 90 (14th), including efforts like this jinking run and composed finish to steal a victory against Oldham:
In these highlights from the game against MK Dons last season, you can see hallmarks of Kirk’s game — an upright running style, low centre of gravity, low shots taken early:
Kirk isn’t blessed with blistering pace and he’s therefore never going to burn past his opposite number, but he causes problems by consistently running directly at defenders, forcing them into difficult decisions. That lack of outright speed means you sometimes get situations like this, where Kirk loses the ball after a heavy touch, wins it back, but then decides against entering a footrace with the opposition backline and instead checks back to pass the ball inside:
This tendency to slow things down and make considered passes is a testament to his composure, but it makes me sceptical about how his game would translate to a side that wanted to play fast counter-attacking football.
Kirk has clear footballing intelligence though and appreciation for space. His first goal from that game against FGR comes because he’s clever enough to hold his position at the far post while everyone else is sucked towards the near post:
While his second goal demonstrates quick thinking and how much faith he has in his touch and technique:
He enjoys a particularly fruitful relationship with his left-back, Harry Pickering:
If you wanted to play with an attack-minded full-back who supports attacking moves by making runs inside and outside his winger, Kirk is the ideal player to act as the fulcrum.
Kirk is also happy to make those supporting runs into the box himself. From the same game, he starts in a tucked-in central position and busts a gut to get on the end of a saved shot:
Out of possession, Kirk does drop back to support his full-back, but mostly helps by using his positioning to deter passes, rather than actively pressing or making tackles. Like most young players though, he occasionally gets attracted to the ball and switches off, which makes tracking his man more difficult:
From what I’ve seen, he plays like a budget Felipe Anderson; more of a shot maker than a shot taker, someone who wants the ball at his feet so he can unlock defences.
Kirk has operated mostly from the left wing — although he does have license to roam, regularly floating out to the right — which could cause a bit of an issue as that’s where Diangana’s thrived for West Brom this season. Diangana’s played on the right hand side for us previously though and looked sharp, so there’s probably a way to accommodate them both.
The major concern is that the likes of Sammie Szmodics, Mo Eisa, Reece Brown, Jayden Stockley have all shown in recent seasons that the jump from League 2 to the Championship is quite a steep one. If the fee was <£5mil and Kirk could be worked into the rotation and given time to acclimatise himself to a higher standard, without having the pressure to immediately deliver, he could be an excellent development prospect going forward.
“Boys against men against Anjorin.”
That’s how I’ve seen Faustino Anjorin’s (18) performances in youth football described. Such is Anjorin’s dominance, even amongst all-conquering Chelsea youth sides, he’s put in a category all of his own, head and shoulders (literally and figuratively) above the rest.
When you watch him, that starts to make sense.
A towering player who is still somehow co-ordinated and fleet of foot, Anjorin is a complete mismatch for defenders in youth team football.
Anjorin glides across the pitch, dancing between defenders and breezing through the lines with the ball at his feet:
He’s quick off the mark and once he gets going, it’s incredibly difficult to stop him:
And it’s not just driving runs from deep that he has in his dribbling repertoire — he can navigate his way through tight spaces, pirouette around defenders, and bulldoze anyone in his way:
He’s not an attacking midfielder who is content to sit in the hole and thread passes through — he wants to get forward and score goals himself. Footage is more scarce for youth football but in the game against a strong Swindon side in the Leasing.com trophy earlier this season, you can see how eager Anjorin is to provide a goal threat. First he arrives late on the edge of the box and is cool enough to slot home a finish with his right foot after a blocked shot…:
…then, as his striker drops off, he runs beyond his team-mate to spearhead the attack and steers home a first-time finish with his left foot.
And that’s what his game is all about, really. This goal against West Ham encapsulates him — he finds a pocket of space, has a rapid check over his shoulder before he receives the pass, plays it out wide, fills the box, finds the finish. It’s class:
There are countless other examples of this but if you watch any highlight video of him, you can see just how regularly he picks up scraps in the box from a deeper starting position.
He’s not a passenger defensively and, like a lot of the players I’ve mentioned, he’s capable of putting in the hard yards to win back possession for his team. He slightly clumsily bullies a Norwich City defender to nick the ball away and then scores from the turnover:
Against Arsenal he closes down a sloppy back pass, capitalises on the defensive mix-up his pressure causes, and then scores:
He presses Liverpool’s right-back, forces the mistake, gets the return pass from Batshuayi, throws in a step-over, slaloms between two defenders, and then scores:
“and then scores” is a common refrain with Anjorin. There aren’t manys 10s with his build and that really sets him apart. Given their physiques and the club they play for, Ruben Loftus-Cheek feels like the easy and slightly lazy comparison, but Anjorin’s thirst for goals is perhaps more reminiscent of Abdoulaye Doucouré’s role at Watford under Nigel Pearson or maybe even early Dele Alli?
Despite his height and strength, there’s a grace to the way Anjorin plays football. Throughout this vid from an England u-19 game, you can see how Anjorin uses his body to shrug off defenders and how elegantly he takes the ball on the half-turn with both feet (on what looks like a difficult surface):
Generally speaking, taking players on their first loan is a bad idea because it rarely works out — often that first loan is the first time these boys will have spent any time away from home, in a new place away from their friends and family and the familiar environment of their parent club, and as such it usually takes them a while to find their feet and adapt. But hopefully in this case some of that would be mitigated by the fact that he’s already left home once to join Chelsea and that by staying in London, he wouldn’t have to uproot himself again entirely.
He’s obviously built for senior football already. The question is just what Chelsea have planned for him. Anjorin’s skillet as a goal-scoring midfielder is extremely valuable and it’s a profile that West Ham haven’t had available to them in a long time. If Anjorin is available on loan next season, I’d want to be first in line.
ST
Ok, on the surface, picking the highest scoring player in all 4 of England’s professional divisions might seem like an obvious, uninspired choice. You also might suggest that picking a player with such a tangibly good scoring record means that he’ll be overpriced, but the real value with Ivan Toney (23) is that he shouldn’t be playing Championship football at all next season. He should be catapulted straight into the Premier League.
Some of the rankings for League One are a bit skewed, as there are a weird number of strikers who have made a lot of appearances but not played a lot of minutes. I’ll try to caveat that when I bring them up, but the important thing to remember is that Toney’s played virtually every single minute of league football season — itself an impressive feat — and played at an incredibly high level throughout.
Toney’s monstrous 4.1 shots per 90 is 4th highest in the league but he’s played at least twice as many minutes as every one above him. He hits 1.9 shots on target per 90 (2nd but Gervane Kastaneer’s only played 191mins) and he offers a variety of different threats with his shooting: 2.2 are right-footed, 0.5 are left-footed, and his 1.5 headed shots are third highest in the league, behind man mountains Armand Gnanduillet and Adebayo Akinfenwa.*
(*WhoScored’s rounding means that these total 4.2 rather than 4.1 for some reason)
2.8 of Toney’s 4.1 shots come from within the penalty area (2nd to James Norwood who has played 1000 minutes less) and 0.4 of those shots come from within the six yard box (14th but Gnanduillet only player with >2k mins with higher).
He’s a creator too, with 1.6 key passes (4th but same story with minutes) resulting in a total of 4 assists. Unafraid of taking risks and willing to play with some flair, Toney’s also just a fun player to watch:
Going forward, this season has been one of sustained excellence from Ivan Toney.
In the defensive phase of the game, he’s efficient, but not ultra busy with his tackling — 1.3 attempted (8th) and 0.9 successful tackles (joint 4th) per 90. That doesn’t tell the whole story, however, as Toney is capable of being a ruthless and relentless presser when the opportunity arrives:
And he positions himself smartly and is alert enough to intercept loose passes from defenders:
When strikers are described as being “all-rounders”, it’s usually because the writer has nothing interesting or insightful to say about them. But sometimes it has a slightly disparaging, jack-of-all-trades kind of meaning attached to it.
That’s not the case with Toney. He genuinely excels in so many different attacking areas and has so many different facets to his game that it’s difficult to not be struck by how well-rounded he is.
Watching him in the flesh, I think the most impressive thing about him is how good his balance is. It makes it exceptionally hard to knock him off the ball when he’s running or holding up play with his back to goal, and it lets him change direction effortlessly to bamboozle defenders.
He’s also an incredible athlete — tall but nimble, strong but graceful, fast without losing any finesse. Just have a look at how high he leaps and how much power he generates on the header for this goal against Accrington:
He’s also clearly a bright, switched-on player, alive to the circumstances of the game. Here he dashes back to make sure he’s onside before launching himself at cross for a diving header:
And here he pulls out to the left to create space for Dembélé to dribble into before slipping a perfectly weighted pass back into his team-mate for the assist:
He’s quality at bringing others into play when he’s got his back to goal as well. Against Oxford, he attracts three defenders to the ball, hold them off, throws in a cheeky nutmeg, and then has the presence of mind to recycle possession, rather than taking a stupid long range shot with his weaker foot:
Against AFC Wimbledon, he comes deep to win a header and then immediately spins off to get involved again:
… followed by a lovely little first-time cushioned header into the path of Szmodics:
Against Ipswich he drops off the frontline and steers a one-touch through ball into Dembélé, who is chopped down for the pen that Toney converts:
An overlooked and underrated aspect of Ivan Toney’s season is that he’s thrived in multiple different tactical shapes with multiple different attacking partners.
At the start of the season, Posh used a 4–4–2 diamond and Toney played alongside a more traditional poacher-type striker in Mo Eisa, with a ball-dominant long range shooter in Marcus Maddison pulling strings behind them. Since Christmas, Eisa’s fallen out of favour and Maddison has moved on to Hull, so Darren Ferguson’s side have shifted to a 3–4–3 shape. Toney has recently found himself playing as a front two with a dribbling creative link player in Siriki Dembélé and has an off-the-ball runner/goalscoring number 10 in Sammie Szmodics to combine with. Toney’s performances have been consistently excellent and he’s adapted his game to the strengths of those around him.
There is reason to exercise a bit of caution, however. Some wariness about signing players from Peterborough is understandable, given that Posh’s club model is built around signing attacking players, giving them a platform to showcase their talents, and then selling them on at a profit. Jack Marriott, Marcus Maddison, Britt Assombalonga, Dwight Gayle, Conor Washington, Lee Tomlin, George Boyd — all these players went through Peterborough en route to the higher echelons of the game. As part of that business model, Posh place an emphasis on an attacking style of play, which can inflate the numbers and reputations of their players.
Toney looks like the real deal to me, though. Dealing with Peterborough can also be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they’re a selling club and are very understanding about allowing their players to move on to higher levels. On the other hand, chairman Darragh McAnthony knows what he’s got with Ivan Toney and it’s therefore going to be expensive extracting him from London Road. There were rumours that a couple of top end Championship clubs had bids of ~£10mil rejected in January, so I’d imagine that Toney will probably cost £15mil at least. If Posh don’t get promoted, that might drop, so there’s a chance to be opportunistic there.
He’d be costly, but I’d be willing to part with my money for him in a heartbeat. He’s the kind of dynamic attacking force that West Ham have been crying out for.
So, based on a combination of my picks and what I think is likely to happen, these ins and outs would leave us with some squad options like this:
