This January Callum Goodall and Jack Elderton have gotten together to profile one player a day from a list of players that West Ham could sign throughout the transfer window.
Callum Goodall is a data and recruitment specialist who you may know from his radar charts and megathreads on Twitter where he has produced an excellent scouting series taking a look at players that West Ham could, or should, invest in. We’re lucky to have him for now before he’s snapped up by the club itself.
Jack Elderton is a player performance analyst specialising in roles and tactics who has taken over production of the recently renewed KUMB Podcast. Here you can find Cal and Jack talking in more depth about West Ham’s form, tactics and transfers each week alongside our match reporter Chris “Wilko1304” Wilkerson.
Listen back to the latest episode here.
Jonathan David has been strongly linked with a move to West Ham in the weeks leading up to the January transfer window. The Lille striker has been involved in 16 goals this season, scoring 12 in the league and four in the cups.
Jonathan David arrived in France in the summer of 2020 after a stellar season at Gent in Belgium where he recorded 34 goal involvements in 40 games. This was an incredible return and he had played largely as an attacking midfielder or as a second striker with one or both of Giorgi Kvilitaia and former Huddersfield man Laurent Depoitre ahead of him. Later in the season he would find himself playing more on the last line but still always alongside one of those two (or current Benfica striker Roman Yaremchuk) in a diamond system with two strikers.
Lille decided to take the plunge and make David their record signing when then-manager Christophe Galtier brought him in for an eye-watering £24.3m. This fee made David Ligue 1’s second most expensive arrival ever for clubs other than PSG and Monaco; second only to Dimitri Payet, of course.
David initially struggled in France, he was playing in a similar system with a physically intimidating striker alongside him in Burak Yılmaz but under Galtier it was a 442 or 4222 where the wide spaces would be left for wingers like Jonathans Ikoné and Bamba to exploit, rather than the 41212 he had thrived in at Gent. Here, there was less space to roam wide and David would be encouraged to operate in more central areas and attack the last line more frequently.
The 2020-21 season was a magnificent one for Lille in which they secured their fourth domestic title and halted PSG’s run. Despite this, David didn’t really kick into gear until the second half of the season once he had properly acclimatised – two goals in the first 19 league games, 11 in the following 19.
The summer after this season would bring shock for Lille though, as Galtier would head south to Nice, the capital of the French Riviera. Here, there was promise of sustained and significant investment from British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe. By contrast, and despite having just won the Ligue 1 title, Lille remained in financial turmoil.
It’s worth noting that we’ll be covering a few of the other esteemed talents based in Northeast France in coming articles, largely due to the fact that the Luxembourg-based investment fund that owns Lille has one key task – reducing the club’s debt.
Unable to drive-up attendances – 34,000 remains the matchday average, leaving 16,000 seats empty every week – and still struggling from the financial implications of the pandemic, Lille are expected to look to move on a number of their promising young talents over the coming windows. Right now, Jonathan David is undoubtedly at the top of that list.
Despite things not going that well on the pitch overall for Lille, as new boss Jocelyn Gourvenecc has struggled to galvanise the group, David has continued his imperious individual form from the second half of the prior season. He’s not just been showing it in Ligue 1 either, he’s bagged three crucial winning goals on the biggest stage of all, the Champions League. In fact, David’s 0.53 non-penalty goals per 90 across all competitions this season makes him one of the most in-form strikers playing in Europe’s Top 5 Leagues.
Taking a deeper dive into David’s shooting metrics paints an even clearer picture of his quality in front of goal. Firstly, he’s consistently outperformed his xG season on season which is testament to his finishing ability. If this were a one-off overperformance then it would be a red flag as it would suggest that his goal returns aren’t sustainable, but the fact that he’s done it in almost every senior campaign of his career implies that he’s just an elite finisher. For those of you that still have some doubts over his goal-scoring prowess, the fact that 55% of his shots this season have found the target and that he currently boasts a seriously impressive 31.66% goal conversion rate should put your mind at ease.
Another area of David’s game that will no doubt have caught Moyes’ eye is his ball-carrying ability. David is a gifted athlete with devastating pace and has proven himself as a brilliant dribbler, averaging 2.14 dribbles per 90 with a success rate of 55%. Whilst the Canadian is currently attempting less dribbles than our most prolific dribblers, his success rate is better than Bowen’s (49.56%) and only marginally worse than Antonio’s (56.35%). A striker that can carry the ball up the pitch and beat his man would clearly be a welcome addition to our front line and, given that Moyes likes to work with a small squad, his ability to play out-wide if needed is surely another positive.
The only metric that might be a cause for concern is his lack of creative output as he has failed to register a single assist this campaign. In previous seasons he has laid on goals for his teammates – four assists for Lille in 2020-21 and nine assists for Gent in 2019-20 – and he does have an xA tally of 3.2 this season so some of the blame has to be laid at the feet of a misfiring Lille side. Taking context and past performances into consideration should go some way to quelling any concern regarding his creativity.
David looks like an excellent target for West Ham to ameliorate our issues at the top end of the pitch but the problem is that he’s done so well that he’s managed to alert pretty much every top team in Europe. Were we to go after him now, we wouldn’t just be vying with other Europa League clubs, we’d be challenging for his signature with Europe’s elite.
There is also another key issue. Jonathan David is an excellent player with a big future ahead of him… but so was Sébastien Haller. Signing a player that can play in the system you want them to play in is a key part of recruiting in any position but is especially important with number nines. David has played the vast majority of the successful period of his career in a two-striker system, and whether that be a 442, a 4222 or a 41212, none of them would be quite like playing as a lone forward in the Premier League.
There’s no doubt that, in theory, he has the skillset required to adapt to that role but the tantalising question will always remain, would he be able to do that in practice. Haller was an excellent player, as proven by his goals record in the Champions League this season, but he was far more experienced than David and still wasn’t able to transition his goalscoring form into a different style and system. Expecting a young Canadian to do so, and to drive us on to a European-qualifying finish in the toughest league in the world, is a big ask. Especially when the fee would likely be astronomical.
Jack’s Rating: C
David is an excellent player but he’s not yet proven himself as a single striker and the fee that we would need to pay to extract him from Lille would make this a big risk.
Callum’s Rating: C+
It’d be an A if we were judging on ability alone, but we’ve seen what happens when you sign an unsuitable striker and David would likely cost even more than Haller.
All rights reserved. Jack Elderton. 2020. Statistical input taken from Wyscout & Fbref (Statsbomb).
Jack Elderton 