Omar Marmoush wants to be every kind of player

When Omar Marmoush was linked to a Premier League transfer in December, I wrote here that I felt he was unlikely to move until the summer. Frankfurt have made other big sales recently and are part of a tight race for Champions League places in the Bundesliga.

Everyone has their price, though, and Manchester City were willing to pay up to get their man now, announcing Marmoush’s signing on Thursday. He cost £60m, which is less than I think he’d have gone for in the summer when teams had more options, and Frankfurt had more ability to find a replacement.

Before I say anything else about Marmoush, I want to say that he’s an excellent footballer. He’s an extremely productive shooter, almost as good of a dribbler, and an above-average passer for a guy whose main job is to dribble and shoot. He should help City’s attack immediately.

But I also don’t know where he’s going to fit in at Manchester City, and it’ll be really interesting to see how Pep Guardiola decides to utilize him. The role he played for Eintracht Frankfurt does not currently exist in City’s setup, and I can’t imagine we’re going to see Guardiola evolve into a manager who favors a counter-attacking style in a 3-5-2 shape.

The most obvious thing that sticks out about Marmoush is that he scores a lot of goals. He doesn’t have a particularly high volume of quality shots for a £60m striker, but he’s putting the ball in the damn net. This volume of low xG bangers converted does not feel very repeatable, but the yellow triangles fall into the category of things you love to see. He’s running onto through balls regularly.

Marmoush’s radar doesn’t look like a lot of other top attackers because he’s such a unique player. Because he’s a second striker in a 3-5-2 who’s spent most of his career as a winger or 10, he doesn’t end up fitting any kind of common architype. He’s more of a shooter and box presence than most wingers, and more of a passer than most strikers.

He’s pretty good at everything, though. It makes sense that City would simply determine that this guy is a quality footballer and figure out the exact role later.

In his first interview with City’s PR team, Marmoush was asked about his preferred position and gave a kind of non-committal non-answer. This sounds to me like he doesn’t want to ruffle any feathers on his first day at the club and he’s happy to do whatever the manager asks of him. But his answer does reveal something: No one really knows yet.

When I look at Marmoush’s skillset and the current needs of City’s squad, left wing seems like the most obvious place for him to get early playing time. But a look at his key passes from this season reveals that he’s not set up teammates from that area at all this season, even as a second striker with some freedom to roam and plenty of shots from the left side of the box. Conversely, he’s a playmaking machine from the right half-space.

Perhaps Marmoush will be City’s utility man, able to fill 4 different forward roles depending on the fitness of other players or the micro-tactics of one particular match. But if you were wondering where the obvious fit was for Marmoush in City’s starting XI… well, there isn’t one. I think they have identified that their team is short a quality attacking player, then purchased the most talented attacking player available on the market, and they’re going to figure out the details as they go along.

Historically, you’d bet on Guardiola to take raw talent and turn it into a productive system fit. That’s not going so well this year. It’ll probably take at least a year and a half for us to know for sure whether or not Marmoush made sense for this team. I’m optimistic, but very cautiously optimistic.

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