Analysis of Young Football Midfielder Ulai

Christ-In-Our-Ulai sounds like a made up Mighty Boosh character if anyone gets that reference

but he's not.

He's a 20-year-old Ivory Coast midfielder, quite an exciting prospect, currently at Trabzonspor

in Turkey.

He's been there for one season, played about 30 games for them, four goals, two assists.

Before that he was in the second division in France but he only played about 16 games

there before Trabzonspor spotted his talent and picked him up.

Also at the World Cup, making a good impression for the Ivory Coast and we know the Ivory

Coast produce some good talent like Willy Bolly of course.

So now we'll dive into the middle of a radar chart to look at some stats.

You find me here in the middle of a radar chart comparing some stats for Elliot Anderson

and Ulai.

Ulai obviously playing at Trabzonspor so his stats are based on comparing him to about

a thousand other midfielders in similar leagues to that so he's not quite competing at the

Premier League level here but stats wise it shows you what kind of player he is above

all else.

So Elliot Anderson in the black lines, very rounded profile, good at pretty much everything

that's why he's a £100m plus player.

Ulai is the red profile and you can see it's much more of a skewed view down towards the

attacking numbers on this chart.

So up here you've got ball winning, defensive dueling and screening.

In the defence which he scores low on, Anderson scores quite well on but then down this end

and round to this end you end up looking at his ball carrying skills which are 9.5 out

of 10, box to box play in his final third involvement 8 out of 10, control and tempo

of the game 9 out of 10, ball retention 9 out of 10, there's a lot of standout stats

about him but I think it's a case of understanding he's a different player to Elliot Anderson

here so he's not going to be the all-round midfielder based on what we see at Trabzonspor.

Now you could have said the same things about Elliot Anderson based on what we saw him do

at Newcastle.

Trabzonspor being quite a dominant team in their league he probably doesn't need to do

some of these defensive sides of the game as much.

He might be capable, I think his stats in France were a little bit more impressive in

that side but not really standout so he's an exciting player, you're going to get the

attacking side of the game, he looks like he's very quick around the box, quick to link

play, spot little through balls and passes, that's what I've noticed at the World Cup

from him and you can see in terms of an overall profile of midfielders from destroyer, midfield

engine, conductor to attacking eight, line-breaking player, he skews towards that side of the

chart again down here.

So as a line-breaker 9.6 out of 10 is very impressive right, so yes it's a lower standard

but he's still being compared across 1,500 other midfielders and he stands out as one

of the top top midfielders for how good he is at pushing his teams forward and getting

involved in that final third.

So exciting player, 20 years old, I think there's quite a bit of interest around him

so the fee is likely to be £30 million maybe, something like that, I mean anything less

than that I'd be interested, above that I suppose the issue for me is that because he's

a little bit more one-sided based on the data and he's 20 years old and he's got to make

that leap from the Turkish league to the Premier League, I'd be wanting another midfielder

with him that's a little bit more established to be able to I suppose allow him to come

into the team gradually as opposed to saying right you're the new Elliot Anderson here.

Now we might change the setup of the midfield where he then becomes a player that can do

more of an attacking role if that's what he's good at and it might just be a case that we

haven't seen his defensive work yet but you can see again on here that role similarity

score I've got down here which tries to capture it all in one number, you know it's made up

numbers to some extent to try and besimplify it but it gives you an idea he's a 78% match

for Anderson as a profile because he doesn't have that defensive bit of his game.

When you adjust that for the league he's in then you can see that 66% number which is

more comparable so if you were signing a player like Anderson from the Premier League he'd

be much closer to a 90% match but this one is yeah okay he's an exciting player but if

you're thinking right this is the new Elliot Anderson there's a bit for him to prove.