What can we expect from Trossard in the title run and beyond?
On his value, positioning, finishing, passing, and work out-of-possession
It’s been a busy week at the grill. We’ll cover the others later, but for now, let’s dive into the game of the one who kicked things off: Leandro Trossard.
I’ll confess my priors up front. I’ve always liked watching him play, and not for particularly complex reasons. As much as we can pick apart things into little details and underlying stats, this game is about goals, and Trossard has been increasingly good at making them happen. I’ve long held the fringe belief that goals are good.
I understand the disappointment in seeing some of Mudryk’s electricity show up in his first Premier League appearance. I’m not sure we learned anything new today, as he possesses traits that would pop for anybody. Sometimes you just miss out on targets, and as far in the Mudryk camp as I was over the past year, for the purposes of this article, I’ll weigh it with three points:
The same Talent ID that scouted Mudryk also believes in Trossard
Because of the gulf in fees, it’s unfair to view it as an apples-to-apples comparison
One is joining a team that is 18 points up on the other, with two games in hand 🙃
Now that you’ve been given the pep talk you didn’t need, let’s talk about Trossard on his own merits. I will say this: going back through his game over the last 36 hours or so, I’ve had a big smile on my face.
Time to dive in to see how he might fit at The Arsenal.
🔥 The BBQ Score
As we covered yesterday, Trossard fared well in the made-up “Sakanelli Score,” which ranked 79 wingers worldwide on value, age, league-adjusted production, fit for Arsenal, and a bunch of other factors.
He ultimately came in 12th, but when you remove the age adjustment and plug in his real transfer fee, he jumped up all the way up to 5th:
In terms of the sample, he fared pretty well across the board, and was near the top at anything directly related to goals. His high-pressure stats were good, as well.
On the other side, there were plenty of other players who had a higher ceiling in terms of pace and pure technicality, which is to be expected in a talented sample.
On Finding Value
How do you get outsize returns in a loony market? Two ways: you have to be a) nonconsensus and b) right. Here’s a hastily made graphic:
In the bottom-right, it’s straightforward but expensive to be with the consensus. For example, with the World Cup and the Champions League now under his belt, there are vanishingly few counterarguments to the quality of Enzo Fernández. He hasn't magically gotten €100m better in the span of six months, but with every team worldwide being interested in a player so rated by the masses, ya better bring your checkbook.
It’s also easy to be nonconsensus and wrong. I’m sure you can think of a few examples.
But if you want to find value in the Age of Froth, you’ll have to be nonconsensus and right, identifying things that other squads are currently overindexing (be it current role, market, body type, readiness, character issue, injury history, whatever) and have the confidence to act on your own vision. With more teams seeing all the spoils of The Arsenal Model and trying to replicate it, evolution will become increasingly important.
For Trossard, the De Zerbi dustup and his age (a positively geriatric 28) offered a perfect opportunity to find a little value in a title hunt. If he was 21, what would his price be?
As James McNicholas and Andy Naylor wrote:
Some might argue it doesn’t fit the strategy — Arsenal will see it as demonstrating flexibility. It’s important to have principles, but not at the expense of results. Not at the expense of a title.
The piece was a fittingly good breakdown of everything that led to the signing, including the post-World Cup drama with De Zerbi that helped grease the move. I don’t think his agent covered himself in glory with the statement during the saga, but if I plan on waiting for an agent to come off well to the public, I’ll be older than some Arsenal fans believe Trossard to be. Perhaps it’s the New Signing Afterglow, but I’m not particularly concerned.
In sum, the Arsenal Model may not be “youth over everything” so much as “value over everything.” Value is still most likely to be found in the younger ranks, but opportunities exist elsewhere. £21m upfront in January for a dude with as many Premier League goals as Salah this year? Not bad.
Role & Positioning
Trossard joined Brighton from Genk in 2019 shortly after the arrival of Graham Potter. Since then, thanks to Potter’s proclivity towards tweaking and iterating, he’s played in almost every shape imaginable, and been used as a CAM, a central forward, a LW, a LWB and a RW.
Here’s how I have his Premier League positional usage broken down. This can be a bit of an inexact science, but should give you the broadstrokes:
Central attacking midfielder/forward: 5082 minutes
Left winger/attacker: 3692 minutes
LWB: 746 minutes
RW: 596 minutes
And here’s how he’s been used so far this year, with WhoScored ratings included. Sample size alert, of course:
He has his qualities when dropping deep and building up, which we’ll cover. But when watching him, you can’t help but find yourself leaning forward when he’s playing up front, marauding around the box.
So where is he best? In his introductory interview, Trossard himself had this to say:
“I like to be in the pocket behind the striker. On the wings, I can explore myself as well. I’m comfortable in either of those positions but if I were to choose, behind the striker - but it all depends on the system.”
Hmm. Sounds familiar to how another “winger” target described himself: João Félix.
We’ll get more to that later, but in general, this Arsenal triangle offers a lot of opportunity for Trossard to do what he does:
Overall, in terms of play-style, the Diogo Jota comparisons are apt, though he’s not quite as explosive. What he does share in common with Jota is that he is prone to hot streaks, likes playing in flexible pockets on the left, and is skilled at using quick-burst athleticism and savvy finishes to put it in the back of the net.
Comparisons to Current Wingers
Here’s a comparison set of Trossard and the current top-3 Arsenal wingers, with in-league stats since the start of the 2021/22 campaign to get a wider look:
While there are a few nuanced observations to make about the above table, the broad conclusion is this: Arsenal managed to sign a player with similar levels of underlying production to their starting duo at a reasonable cost. Praise the grill.
Shooting & Attacking
As a finisher, he is most similar to ESR. He favors direct, clean, repeatable, low strikes away from the keeper. While he’s scored a few long bois in his Brighton career, they are not of the curling worldie variety. They are, again, just clean, perfectly-placed balls in the side netting.
Because he’s so comfortable in crowded spaces, he will suit a high-up, high-possession side. He’s wonderful at letting defenders slide around him to their heart’s content, and picking out the right moment to shoot.
In this moment against Chelsea, he showed off many of his skills.
First he stepped up on a loose ball and tipped it away from Thiago:
With the ball bouncing away towards Mitoma, Trossard immediately sprints into the space to catch the defenders in a difficult spot:
…and now that he sees the full momentum of the play going one way, he makes a bet on Thiago’s direct tendencies and decides to loop behind him:
And Mitoma finds him alone in front of Kepa. But the work is not done. He baits Kepa into coming out of his 6-yard-box:
…and eventually slots it home past two defenders by putting it within an inch of the far post:
He’s a true ambipedal ball-striker, as well, and can score from anywhere in the box. Across competitions, I have him at 19 goals with his right foot and 15 with his left. He doesn’t offer much threat from the air.
Perhaps the most likable part of Trossard’s game is his off-ball work around the opponent goal. He’s lovely at manipulating space, generating inertia in a defender, or finding little pockets to exploit.
As we found out, he’s also good at arriving in the box at the right time. He put this one in the corner:
Passing Range
There can be no broad statements made about his passing game. Depending on the pass type, he can range from excellent to meh.
Perhaps most excitingly for Arsenal, he can be good at picking out important through-balls to cutting players, like this:
He also can pump in deeper through-balls from wide spaces.
From there, he adds a nice dimension as a capable crosser from the left-flank. Interestingly, he also can hit on big switches of play. Arsenal is an outlier amongst top teams in switches—Arsenal brings up the rear, while their rivals are up front—and I often think that overloading the left with Zinchenko and co. attracting leans, and then switching it all the way over to Saka is a good path to goals that hasn’t been fully exploited.
Here’s one example of a big switch he’s got in his locker. This landed in March’s lap on the right-wing:
In standard progression, it’s a mixed bag. He’s generally solid, and has been more involved in progression than either Saka or Martinelli, and his movement and availability to the ball seems strong. It’s the medium-range where he struggles: he can fail to properly weight passes at that distance, and has only completed 63.5% of them.
Further along, he can try to pick out cute little passes that aren’t “on,” and should probably just keep the ball on the ground more often there. But that’s a minor quibble.
Dribbling & Control
He’s not Martinelli down the line but he’s a capable dribbler. His efficiency has dipped a bit this year, but I don’t see much reason to think anything tangible has changed.
While he thrives most around the box, he can be useful at helping unstick progression with progressive carries. If he were to play in the left-8, his immediate bursts of pace would be an upgrade over Xhaka.
He brought this one all the way from the defensive third to the attacking third:
He’s slick at adjusting his balance and maintaining a level of unpredictability, but can occasionally be shoved off by bigger players. His first touch isn’t spotless, but concerns about his miscontrols may be overstated (he’s right around the Saka/Martinelli range there).
As we’ve covered in the piece on Odegaard, ball losses alone don’t mean much without context:
The best players often dominate the list of league leaders of losses, because the best players usually play a lot, and get the ball a lot—and when they do, they try to make things happen in the attacking side. Ball losses are a natural byproduct of doing so. That’s fine: Martinelli lost the ball 20 times on Monday, and some of Jesus’ best performances include 20+ losses. The important parts are the where, when, and whys of the losses—and whether the risk accrued is a net positive transaction, resulting in opportunities.
While Trossard loses the ball a fair amount, his losses aren’t usually of the dangerous variety, and his 2.53 loss index (which measures the danger created by the player in the final phase in relation to ball losses) is A-OK.
Out of Possession
When you watch a few full-90’s of a player, you can generally get a sense of their contributions in passing, positioning, and dribbling. It can be harder to make confident generalizations about their work in defense: did the team opt for a low-block this time? Did they ramp up their pressing triggers? Did the player’s role in the press change? It’s very situational.
To that end, I’m not sure I can confidently say whether he’s an excellent profile for Arsenal or just a solid one. There are cases for both. On the bull case, Arsenal now has 3 out of the top 12 players in possession won in the final third (via FotMob):
#4 - Fabio Vieira (1.5/90)
#9 - Leandro Trossard (1.4/90)
#12 - Martin Ødegaard (1.3/90)
The Brighton system will serve him well here. He’s got a high success rate in overall duels, and whenever I watch, his work-rate is above average. Somewhat surprisingly given his size, I’ve also generally liked his work in the defensive third — and he can show good composure when offering challenges there:
He seems to be good at holding space and not getting dribbled around, and not prone to big mistakes. That said, I wasn’t often blown away by his overall direct activity, and wouldn’t mind seeing more “counting” stats when it comes to defensive intensity: dribbles contested, tackles won in the middle third, total recoveries, etc.
He might indeed be a monster, I don’t know. I’m interested to see how it plays out.
In Conclusion
If it wasn’t clear already, the Newcastle game showed everybody a glimpse of the New Normal. For the first twenty minutes or so, the third-place team tried to play their normal brand of high activity, muscular, pressing football. After seeing the results, they abandoned the plan, and settled down in a rock-solid 4-5-1, no longer looking to score against a top-of-the-table rival.
If a team that good is going to do it, it’s safe to assume most others will continue to follow suit. With that in mind, there is an increased need for tight-space agility, savvy movements, and composed finishing. Trossard brings all in spades.
Early yesterday, I said “do you want to hear my Trossard-in-Xhaka-role propaganda now or later?” I was mostly kidding: in the near-term, I think Trossard is gonna fill in most on the LW, and rotate everywhere else across the frontline in spurts.
But in the longer-term, I do believe there’s something there. As we covered in detail last time, the old summaries of the responsibilities of the left-8 are no longer sufficient. Arteta himself refers to the twin 10’s as “left attacking midfielder” and “right attacking midfielder.”
Trossard covers many of the new responsibilities to perfection: elite movement in the box, ability to show danger in all three spots of a triangle with the LW and inverted LB, high pressing intensity, positional discipline, and the work rate to get back as a face-up defender and support Zinchenko. There will be plenty to iron out: despite the shortened list of requirements in build-up, is he secure enough on the ball to make it work? (For Xhaka’s lack of agility in the middle third, he’s got half as many miscontrols, despite fewer touches). Can his ability to carry the ball up offset that potential concern? We’ll see.
All that said, parking him in that left half-space, which is the closest thing we have to a shadow striker, would put him in his happy place — and perhaps put us in ours. There isn’t a long list of Premier League players you’d rather have hanging out in those positions.
As far as the Mudryk and Felix deals go, I was an “idealist without illusions,” as they say. Those ultimately unfolded in ways that were surprising, disappointing, and inevitable all at once. As a next option, signing Trossard makes all the sense in the world. Arsenal can confidently say they added a versatile winger who can nearly match the production (if not the pure dynamism) of their stars, and even be striker depth—and did so without tying their hands on future deals. He’s ready made, and you feel comfortable with him starting against top sides right away.
He’s not without warts: he struggles in medium-passing and can have stretches of games where his impact wanes. There’s little reason to think he’ll struggle due to tactics, as he’s shown a lot of flexibility over the years, but he may be prone to periods of lower form, and isn’t entering the team on the best run.
But that’s expectation management, as there’s also a non-zero chance that he absolutely explodes when playing for a side that settles down in dominant possession in the attacking third. He’s not a squad player: he’s a genuine-level raiser in how we’ll be able to spell and rotate up front and pluck goals. I’m excited to see him play.
Have a good one all. Hopefully I didn't fuck up and walk into a messy discourse by publishing this too close to the Mudryk debut, haha — I had planned to get it out yesterday, but my schedule didn't allow. In any case, I hope Trossard is evaluated based on Trossard.
Happy grilling. May we see some goggle eyes soon.
🔥