After Coutinho joined Villa, Gerrard's team added another fierce player - Digne. What is this French left-back? Why has it become a scramble in the market?
On Thursday, Premier League Club Aston Villa officially announced the signing of France international left-back Digne. The 28-year-old Dinier previously played for Everton after a feud with the relatively conservative toffey coach Benitez, whose playing preference for attack was at odds. The transfer transaction is said to be around £25 million. After joining Villa, Dinier may become an important force for manager Gerrard to transform the team together with midfielder Coutinho, who has been loaned here.
"The new big man in the Premier League", "the ambitious former star young manager", plus the "defending champions of the Champions League", all three sides want to get a full-back who is now ranked 15th in the Premier League, which feels a little strange. Of course, it is not too difficult to interpret this demand, such as Tuchel's team is indeed short of left-gate people, and their heavily acquired Chilwell last season is seriously injured and has to be suspended for several months. Villa and Newcastle are fighting for relegation, and their new managers are looking to their side to do more on the flanks – even though gerrard's tactical style of coaching has been demonstrated, and Eddie Howe's first signing with Trippier has illustrated the problem.
But the demand is only one aspect, and the question on the other hand is what level is Digne? Why has it become a scramble in the market? Regarding the former, if you usually play video games, most of them will have some impressions of the ability level of The French left-back: in FIFA22, Digne is actually the highest overall rating of All Everton's ability, reaching 83 and the same as goalkeeper Pickford, higher than Richard Lisson, Alan and 81 Calvert Luin at 81.
Of course, the game values are not realistic, and at most they can only be used as a reference, but in terms of real data, Di negne is in a sense completely "first-class". Despite the Frenchman's shortcomings in not being tight and easy to leak, the ability to intercept one-on-one close-quarters is still good, and his biggest strength is to insert assists, especially the skill of left-foot crosses and main penalty set-pieces is quite standard. It is also because of this unique work that Digne has contributed 18 Premier League assists in the past three and a half seasons, and the assist statistics of the same period are only lower than Liverpool's Robertson (35) of all full-time left-backs in the Premier League, and far higher than Chilwell (13), Creswell (10) and Luke Shaw (10).
If you use the finer data , the expected number of assists per 90 minutes ( xA ) , Dinier's index from the 2018-19 season to the present is as high as 0.18, also in the Premier League after Robertson (0.2) second. Comparing the statistics of all the players in Everton, only The expected number of assists per 90 minutes (0.24) of the departed Team is higher than that of James Rodriguez, who has left the team.
In this way, Digne can certainly be one of the top left-backs in the Premier League at the moment, and it is not surprising that buyers are willing to pursue. It was only in February last year that the Frenchman renewed his contract with Everton until 2025, so how come it has not been a year before outsiders think that he is easy to be poached? The crux of the matter is that the Toffee has changed managers this season. Since Ancelotti's sudden departure to Real Madrid and The addition of Benitez, the team's style has changed. "Master Bay" values practical results and believes that the current Everton can't play too fancy things, so everything is based on stability first, which makes Dini, who loves to insert forward, quite uncomfortable.
According to statistics, Dinier has touched the ball per 90 minutes this season, which is much lower than his first year in the Premier League (79.7), while the Frenchman has a significant increase in the number of forward passes, apparently because he has more time at the back and cannot cross laterally as frequently as before. Therefore, Digne also believes that he is limited by the manager, especially Benitez has also cut his corner and free kick penalties, which makes the France international feel that he has nowhere to play. Looking at the expected number of assists per 90 minutes again, you will find that if you exclude set-pieces, Digne's value will drop to 0.12, so it is reasonable that he cares about it.
The players were unhappy, the manager felt that the subordinates were disobedient and did not think about the team, and the contradiction between the two sides had actually broken out in December last year. Since Benitez abruptly excluded Digne from the starting line-up, the French left-back has not played for Everton for more than a month. Therefore, it is basically certain to change the team and leave, just to see where Di negne's next choice is. From Chelsea's point of view, they only need an emergency spare tire, there is no need to spend more money to buy a defender who only wants to play the main force. Although Newcastle has money and a position, Digne himself has little interest in the second-to-last team in the league.
Villa's advantages are clear. On the one hand, they can offer Everton some "extra" benefits, such as selling their own unused winger Gazi to the other side. On the other hand, Di negne has also been a teammate at Barca for half a year with Coutinho, who has just joined Villa on loan, which may help his integration. Manager Gerrard has not been in charge of the team for a long time, and he wants to change the team's previous defensive-first tactics to flying on both wings like the Glasgow Rangers (or Liverpool), which necessarily needs full-backs who can fly up, and also needs better scheduling masters in midfield.
After the opening of the winter transfer window in international football in January, more and more players changed the court, in addition to Dine and Coutinho joining Villa, the Premier League's new local tycoon team Newcastle has also started its own operation, they signed 30-year-old New Zealand centre-forward Chris Wood from their direct relegation rival Burnley.
In addition, Gaulat, who played for Guangzhou, also joined Santos in Bajia as a free agent. More transfer transactions can be found in the table below
Wen | Yan Yu
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U.S. editor | Tingting