Putting a Price on Youth

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away I wrote about trying to put a valuation on an 18-year-old kid named Kylian Mbappe. While slightly terrified by just how many teenagers are making moves in this new transfer market, I figure it’s worth revisiting some guidelines on this process through the lens of Kobbie Mainoo, Elliot Anderson, and… Jack Clarke?

“I feel like coaches look at Mainoo and they see his potential future, but almost nothing he does RIGHT NOW is good enough to start for England.”

I said this while watching England suffer for their tournament lives once again against Slovakia, much to the ridicule of Manchester United and England fans alike, who seemed to think he was the best player on the pitch. The problem with the team is largely positional and systemic, and that’s on Southgate. But the selection of Mainoo himself is a bigger one that revolves around talent potential, judging where it’s at currently, and alternatives/opportunity cost in squad building.

To briefly note on England, you have the best box-crashing attacking midfielder in the world in Jude Bellingham. England have no left back, which means the left sided-attack is stunted, and they need a sitting partner for Declan Rice to let Jude do what he does best and free up the forwards to attack once in a while.

Kobbie doesn’t sit (well). He doesn’t currently know how to contribute to a stable midfield. Manchester United were the most porous big team in the world last season, and we have 23 90s of data that tell us Kobbie was constantly overwhelmed while playing there. Yes, that’s potentially due to everyone else being bad, but that’s not really a starting position I would take in doing analysis with any credibility.

From the eye test, Mainoo looks like a future mainstay of the Manchester United midfield. But outputs from when he was on the field say that basically everything he does is in the 11th-50th percentile for a Premier League midfielder. Which is GREAT for an 18-year old, assuming he still has five to six more years of development before he reaches his prime. But it is literally below average in almost everything, compared to most other players in the league.

I guess it’s fine for Manchester United to give him a ton of playing time in a season where they are fairly pants and have few other reasonable options in midfield. But it feels far from ideal for England to make the same choice in the knockout rounds of a tournament where they were one of the top 3 favourites coming into it.

When I started doing transfer work in 2013, football did not understand age curves. [Ben Pugsley here.] Manchester City bought a bunch of 28-year-olds and put them on five year contracts (my work). Everyone thought proven players were good until they weren’t and that was it. Seems baffling, right? Well, it was. And it stayed that way for a surprisingly long time (me on Rashford in 2016). [More from StatsBomb great Colin Trainor here.] At Brentford we were able to buy a series of 22 or unders from various leagues for small amounts, give them playing time in better leagues, and sell them for 3-10x in a few years time.

Now the market has almost inverted. We’re seeing significant overpays for youth all over the shop, and it’s happening because some teams want to buy lottery tickets. In every sport we know of, youth development is uncertain.

Sometimes promising young players put up good metrics in top leagues and they turn into world beaters like Mbappe or Erling Haaland or Jude Bellingham. Plenty of times they end up being in the top 20% in Europe at their positions. But many other times, early developers just peter out and disappear halfway through a promising career (Josh McEachran).

Take the Chelsea trio of Patrick Bamford, Dominic Solanke, and Tammy Abraham. All three were outstanding forward talents coming out of the Chelsea academy. Bamford was Player of the Year in the Championship at age 22, Abraham scored 23 goals in a season at Bristol City as a teenager, and Solanke… well, he was picked up by Liverpool on a free out of the Chelsea academy, and looked like potentially their new CF for the next decade. Tammy and Dom were also mainstays in England youth national teams that were among the best in the world at the time.

Not one of those guys could be considered a world beater now, but all three have ended up with good-not-great professional careers. If you overpaid for them at age 20-23 as we are seeing the market do now, you would have been disappointed with the lottery outcomes, but they were pretty good bets at the time.

Jack Clarke is another name on the list of promise with an inconsistent path. At age 18, he was picking up minutes at Leeds United under Marcelo Bielsa. In July 2019, Spurs signed him for a rumoured £10M with further add-ons. Blessed with pace and size, he was already a handful on the dribble at age 18 and kept his head up well enough to create for teammates. An obvious future star.

Since then, he had a couple of failed loans at QPR and Stoke before settling in at Sunderland for a good couple of seasons. Last season he scored 10 goals on 7.5 xG, and was generally a huge pain in the ass to deal with when on the dribble. His shot locations are fairly terrible, but he’s consistently outperforming his expected goals. At age 23, he is probably going to be a Premier League player… but he’s not likely to shine at the Champions League level.

Remember when Sean Longstaff was going to be the starting midfielder for Manchester United for the next decade?

Injuries happen. Poor tactical fits happen. Loans to Tony Pulis happen. (Okay, those don’t happen any more, but there was no better way to stunt the development of exciting young attackers than to loan them out to Pulis.) Sometimes players end up hating the game, even when it pays them millions of pounds a year. Sometimes they simply no longer want to live like monks when the rest of their age group is having fun and partying.

Elliot Anderson has promise. He played 21 90s in League Two at Bristol City at age 19. Then we have about half a season of data at Newcastle over the last two years that suggests he’s probably pretty good. Close control, balance, and strength are excellent. Passing in transition is good. Passing in the possession game I am less sure about. Defensive work rate and destructive ability are also uncertain. The fee is £35M-ish (“swap deal problems”) and he’s a bit more proven than a lot of the kids in motion, but the fee feels like a large one for Forest.

I know it’s weird for me to suggest pumping the breaks on the youth signing movement when I put it into practice at Brentford a decade ago. The current wave feels like mad speculation similar to what we see in overheated financial markets, but it does suggest having a good academy to develop youth and prospects is always a good idea now.

Part of running a club effectively is maximizing whatever value the market gives you during any particular period of time.

And another part is seeing through the hype of potential, while being realistic about what players can do on the pitch right now. Then you go about setting up your team and your players so that everyone can be as successful as possible in the immediate and long-terms.

--TK

Rumours and News

• Archie Gray has completed his move from Leeds to Tottenham, in a last-minute GAZUMPING of Brentford. He doesn’t quite fit into the above analysis since he made 41 mostly very good starts for Leeds last year, but his reported £35 million fee still implies a bit of a gamble that he’ll get better than he is right now.

• Gray has played both right back and central midfield, Tottenham scheduling talks with AC Milan to negotiate the sale of Emerson Royal might be a hint about where they see Gray’s future.

• Bologna has confirmed that they’ll consider offers for 22-year-old center back Riccardo Calafiori. English media claims interest from most of the Premier League’s big clubs, though it’s tough to figure out how much of that is legitimate interest and how much is Calafiori’s agent trying to generate interest. He has solid aerial, tackling and passing numbers and is left-footed, so Bologna’s unlikely to struggle to attract bidders. He’s good.

• Lifelong Liverpool fan Anthony Gordon has apparently Had His Head Turned by a bid from the Reds, though Luke Edwards’ reporting on this is interesting. He suggests that Liverpool made an opportunistic lowball offer while Newcastle was facing PSR problems, and won’t move closer to their valuation of Gordon now that the calendar has ticked over to July. This makes sense.

• Manchester United are negotiation for Matthijs de Ligt, which fits in nicely with our piece yesterday on their interest in defensive midfielder Manuel Ugarte. If they’re adding a bit of steel to their midfield at the expense of range of passing, they can offset that by improving their passing at center back.

• Adrien Rabiot’s contract has expired and he’s apparently open to returning to Juventus, but using interest from Milan and Premier League clubs against them in negotiations. He’s going to secure a fat ass bag. More players should run down their contracts and spark bidding wars.

• Arsenal Women have signed Mariona Caldentey from Barcelona, which looks like a bit of a coup. She’s an outstanding passer and dribbler who can play on the left wing or up top, and the kind of dream teammate that’s going to make other attacking players want to sign for the Gunners.