What are we doing with Grady Diangana?
Since signing a new 6-year contract in the middle of January, Grady Diangana has played a grand total of 48 minutes of Premier League football. He came on for the final 23 mins of the recent Everton match when the game was already lost and, prior to that, his only other league appearances have been ~10 minute cameos in away defeats to Manchester City and Bournemouth. He’s also failed to make the match day squad in 5 out of 13 league games in that time period, despite being healthy.
He did play 90 minutes against Birmingham and 45 minutes against AFC Wimbledon in the FA Cup, but that’s still only the equivalent of 2 whole matches since the turn of the year. Furthermore, he’s only played twice for the under-23s since the end of September, so being on the periphery of the first team squad without playing much has deprived him of match time almost entirely.
Tying a player down to such a long contract and then not playing him makes little sense. Regardless of how good or otherwise you think Diangana is at the minute, it’s now in the club’s best interests to maximise his potential — Diangana turns 21 next week, so the club have essentially committed to paying him until he’s 27. If they can’t develop him into a rotation player at the very least, that contract will look like a terrible decision.
With 5 games to, now is the perfect time to play him because:
The season is effectively dead
Qualifying for the Europa League is still mathematically possible but highly unlikely. We’re 5 points behind current 7th placed team Leicester, although Wolves have the same number of points as them and have a game in hand. The four teams above us all have considerably better goal difference than we do too — we’re on -9, while Watford, Everton, Leicester, and Wolves all have either positive or neutral goal difference.
Our remaining fixture list is quite difficult too, with away games against Manchester United, Tottenham, and Watford to come, as well as a home game against Leicester. To finish 7th, we’d have to win the majority of our remaining matches and hope other teams drop points.
Essentially there’s very little at stake in these games, which makes them a prime opportunity to develop younger players. Even if some of our lot are playing with their flip flops on, it’ll still be a more competitive level than u-23s games. Each additional higher place in the table is worth somewhere around £2 million, so throwing away games would be foolish, but the extra development time for players could be more valuable for the club in the long term in terms of transfer value at a later date.
There’s nothing to be gained from starting our senior forwards
Diangana’s lack of playing time would be more tolerable if it was being limited because we had a set of wide players/forwards who unquestionably warranted selection, but that’s not the case.
Samir Nasri has looked bright in patches against Arsenal and Huddersfield but he’s been restricted to 5 appearances in the 13 league games we’ve played since he signed due to a combination of injury and fitness issues. Pellegrini might want to play him between now and the end of the season to determine whether he wants to sign him to a longer term contract in the summer but supposedly he got injured again during his half-time warm-up on Monday night. The last thing we need is another player who struggles to be available on a weekly basis.
As for the others, Michail Antonio has had serious injury problems over the last few years so, with effectively nothing to play for, letting him sit out the rest of the season to give him an extended break would suit all parties. Felipe Anderson has started 32/33 Premier League games and could probably do with a rest. Robert Snodgrass offers little to the side and Lanzini has looked unconvincing when he’s played in a wider role lately.
Further forward, Lucas Pérez has been virtually anonymous whenever he’s been on the pitch and the futures of Marko Arnautović and Javier Hernández are still up in the air. Arnautović has made little impact when he’s reverted to playing as a winger so, if Pellegrini is going to accommodate both of those two in the side at the same time, it doesn’t make much sense to shoehorn in one out wide.
On the whole, there’s little benefit to giving any of these players a lot of minutes in the final 5 games of the season as many of them are unlikely to be here next year.
Opportunities will be more difficult to come by in the future
Diangana’s emergence at the start of this season was largely due to fortunately timed injuries to his team-mates: Nathan Holland would probably played ahead of Diangana against Macclesfield had he not been injured and Andriy Yarmolenko’s season-ending injury facilitated Diangana’s continued involvement with the first team.
Yarmolenko will be back next season, so Diangana will have an extra player to compete with and will inevitably fall further down the pecking order. First team minutes will be even more difficult to come by if we go out and sign further wide players.
When he came on against Everton the other week, Diangana didn’t play especially well as he managed to sloppily give the ball away in dangerous areas twice in quick succession. It underlined that we still don’t really know how effective he is at Premier League level or what his ceiling as a player can be.
If nothing else, the remaining 5 games of this season represent a great opportunity for us to figure out what’s best for his development going forward. Give him some starts, let him make mistakes and try to persevere through them in a first team environment so we can learn about him in the process.
If he looks like he can be a contributor to the squad on a regular basis next season, that’s great — it might save us some money if it means we don’t have to go out and sign another player. If he’s not quite there yet, then the exposure to Premier League football will hold him in good stead and provide him with some experience to learn from. It also gives him a greater body of work that might encourage teams from elsewhere to take him on loan and give him a prominent role next season.
Committing to a 6-year contract for a player in his early twenties and then failing to give him significant game time is incredibly dumb. The club need to take opportunities like this to develop Diangana or he’s going to end up as more expensive deadwood in the squad.
