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.
Andrea Belotti has been linked with a move to West Ham since his breakout season at Torino. The Italian striker has two goals and one assist so far this season.
Since Andrea Belotti scored 26 goals in 35 Serie A games for Torino in 2016-17, he has been linked with moves to virtually every club under the sun. At the time it was hard to see how Torino, who were averaging a home gate of 19,000 and still couldn’t finish any higher than ninth despite their prodigiously talented striker’s incredible returns, could keep hold of Belotti.
Five years on and Belotti is still based in the industrial centre of Northwestern Italy and captaining Toro but it hasn’t been plain sailing for Belotti or Torino in this period.
Belotti’s goal returns have dwindled but stabilised at one-in-two pace with 10, 15, 16 and 13 scored in the seasons following 2016-17. And more broadly, Torino followed up the relative success of that season with two more positive campaigns but have struggled since and barely survived relegation in their previous two terms in Serie A.
This season has started brightly though. Torino sit 11th and have some excellent young players in the squad like Tommaso Pobega, Wilfried Singo, Gleison Bremer, and Alessandro Buongiorno. Keep an eye on Bremer, he’s an exciting young centre-back that we might come back to look at later in the window.
Interestingly, as Torino’s fortunes have turned, Belotti’s have too.
After a successful summer where he featured several times for the Italian side that beat England to claim glory at Euro 2020, Belotti suffered a serious hamstring injury that has kept him out for much of this season so far.
Many would claim that if their captain was fit Torino would be pushing even higher up the table but there is an argument to suggest that as Torino have increasingly struggled in recent years, so has Belotti. At times he’s begun to look like a man hellbent on dragging his team to survival, and whilst he has been returning the goals that have kept them up, his individualism has grown and his neglect for teammates may have become part of Torino’s problem too.
Freed from that this season with Antonio Sanabria deputising up front, Torino have improved as a unit and space has emerged for those young players to blossom.
It seems like the perfect time for Belotti and Torino to finally part ways.
This begs the question of whether he would be a good signing for West Ham and the first thing that needs to be addressed is the drop-off that has already been touched upon above. Belotti’s reduced goal return following the 2016-17 campaign is less concerning when you consider that there are very few individuals that can sustain such form across multiple seasons of top flight football – those few that can are playing at a higher level than West Ham are right now.
Many fans would point out that a player capable of scoring 15 goals a season would be a welcome addition to West Ham, where only a handful of players have managed such a tally in our history. There are however, some other more concerning trends in Belotti’s game that recruitment departments will surely be wary of when considering a move for him this January.
The first red flag in Belotti’s underlying numbers is that he has consistently underperformed his xG since that freakish 2016-17 season. In that season, Belotti outperformed his xG of 20.52 by almost 8 goals but in the following season he underperformed his xG of 18.31 by more than 5. If this underperformance was a one-off then it would be less of a problem, as there’d be every reason to believe it was just an anomaly and that he’d be capable of replicating his stronger form again. But in the four full seasons since that eye-catching campaign, Belotti has underperformed his xG by an average of 3.58 per season, suggesting that he simply isn’t as good a finisher as many would have you believe.
This rather damning conclusion is further supported by his recent shooting metrics too, as the quality of Belotti’s shooting appears to have declined in correlation with his xG underperformance. From 2015-16 to 2020-21, 40.5% of Il Gallo’s shots had hit the target, a level of accuracy not far off Cristiano Ronaldo (41.2%). This season though, albeit having featured far less frequently, Belotti’s right boot has been less of a homing missile and more of a home run, with only 28.6% of his shots finding the target.
Given the limited sample size, the recent injury and the fact it’s the first time that Belotti’s accuracy has dipped below 37.5% since this data has been recorded (2015) it’d be silly to read too much into this drop-off in isolation. But when considered alongside his consistent xG underperformance and rather unremarkable goal conversion rate of 15.5% since 2015, this decline does become more concerning. This is only further affirmed by the fact that the team most interested in signing him at present appears to be Toronto FC of MLS, which would be fine if he were entering his mid-30s but he’s 27 so, in theory, he should be entering his “prime”.
For all the concerns surrounding his finishing, there are still some positives. As mentioned already, a goal return of more than 10 per season is decent and if he were being brought in as a rotation option, 20+ goals per season between him and Antonio would be an excellent return.
Belotti has also spent the majority of his career playing as a lone striker for Torino and his pressing metrics match up well with Antonio’s – roughly 14 pressures per 90 with 26% effectiveness – so he should have no problem leading the line in Moyes’ system.
The biggest outlier in Belotti’s numbers though, and perhaps his biggest strength as a player, is his dribbling ability. Since 2015, he has averaged 4.23 dribbles per 90 with a success rate of 54%, whilst also managing 1.55 progressive runs and drawing 3.1 fouls. This proves that he can beat his man and carry the ball up the pitch effectively with the only way to stop him being to illegally bring him down. And this skillset could make him a valuable addition to the current West Ham team given our counter-attacking style and the threat we pose to other teams from set-pieces.
With six months left on his contract and very little chance of a new deal being agreed, Torino will likely be keen to arrange a move for Belotti this window to receive some compensation when they lose their biggest asset. And Belotti could be a useful option for us. His speed and strength combined with his genuine ability on the ball and relentless energy would surely make him a popular figure in East London… If he could recapture his fitness and best goalscoring form.
Jack’s rating: C-
Belotti could be a great option if we can agree a cut-price deal with Torino but his injury issues this season combined with his generally regressing form are a concern. There’s a great player in there but with his injury set to keep him out for some time yet, this seems like a big risk.
Callum’s rating: C
A decent player with one exceptional season under his belt; a number of less impressive seasons have since passed though and his underlying numbers suggest he’s on a concerning trajectory. He could be a positive short-term option but isn’t someone we should be looking to as a long-term solution.
Jack Elderton 