Hugo Ekitike: Slot's New Pressing Monster?
Arne Slot recently praised Hugo Ekitike's defensive improvement. The data shows positives and negatives.
Data correct prior to Premier League matchweek 17.
Having looked at Mohamed Salah’s contribution to Liverpool’s defensive work in the previous subscriber edition of this newsletter, it was interesting that Arne Slot spoke about Hugo Ekitike’s off-ball efforts in his pre-Tottenham press conference. A coincidence this well-timed is too good an opportunity to pass up.
“People are focused only on goals, but [Ekitike] helps us out now defensively as well and that is also very important for a number nine,” Slot said. “In the talks I’ve had with him, I’ve probably spoken more about what I expect from him defensively than offensively.”
“Before we signed him, he had no problems with that. After we signed him, he sometimes felt like, ‘Can we also talk a bit about offence?’ But there’s not so much to talk about offence with him because that part of his game is very good. Defensively, I’m more and more excited to see what he’s doing as well,” Slot added.
Alexander Isak is clearly the best player for comparison purposes here. It was hard to get a read on what to expect defensively from either forward when sizing up which man the Reds should pursue in the summer (as they obviously wouldn’t spend over £200m to get both).
An FBRef analysis of Opta data gave Ekitike the edge on the long-established defensive metrics while Statsbomb’s numbers had Isak markedly higher for possession-adjusted pressures. What went before doesn’t really matter now, particularly with Liverpool struggling to string decent performances together. A radar comparison between last season and this suggests Ekitike has improved, at least in terms of the volume of his defending in three of four categories.
As there are more advanced ways to analyse players than counting how many tackles or blocks they make, we should dig a little deeper. There are reasons for encouragement albeit areas for improvement remain.
