….I was only thinking as temporary for AFCON but ultimately you can’t keep top talent out of the side. He’ll find his rightful place in time.
Amazing comments from PNE fans.
….I was only thinking as temporary for AFCON but ultimately you can’t keep top talent out of the side. He’ll find his rightful place in time.
Amazing comments from PNE fans.
Hopefully these Preston fans know what they are talking about. An all action centre midfielder would be great. Names like Bellingham, Viera and Gerrard mentioned. No pressure
Ralphie Boy
Player Valuation: £8m
Just playing like Viera will do me, Gerrard is a sh794ouse and Bellingham is over rated!
Hinchcliffe's Corner
Player Valuation: £50m
If we want to waste a players career out of position on the wing we have Alcaraz for that already. Let the boy cook for Preston this year.
mightymoyes
Player Valuation: £70m
Dont think he was, but was at the previous game
He was at Tuesday’s game.
Marius57
Player Valuation: £70m
Will give more fire to the rumours we are planning to recall him when Gana goes to Afcon
For the stats inclined, and do feel free to skip over this post if the word stats just made you involuntarily shout 'utter woke nonsense' over your cornflakes...
He's played enough now for there to be some data available, here's the link for him this Championship season:
fbref.com
Main caveat: 500 minutes is still an extremely small sample size
Headline info: pretty incredible for an 18 year old in his first ~6 games at a new club.
One important thing to bear in mind when reading it is his touches and passes received are pretty low. Sometimes that means a player is poor at being in the right place at the last time and games can pass them by, which is common with young players, but in this instance it's more likely a function of the team he's playing in and style of play - all their midfielders do. In any case, it's something you can fairly confidently say both elsewhere and as he gets older.
This means a lot of his numbers will be fairly heavily suppressed by simply not being on the ball as much. But! And this is a huge but! He still has REALLY GOOD numbers in lots of areas. That's incredible again considering his age and being new in a team. On-ball things that really stand out to me:
Progressive carries
Carries into final third
Progressive passes
Passes into penalty area
These are all above average, some of them enormously so. When you adjust for the amount of touches he has, you're talking stratospheric in some of them. A great comparison is Wharton's championship season at the same age - adjusted for touches, Armstrong is slightly below in his passing forwards but WAY ahead in his carrying. These are some of the kind of stats I look at first for midfielders because it basically says: how good are they at moving the ball up the pitch and getting attacks going?
Some defensive things that stand out - he wins a stonking amount of things in the air, and is extremely hard to dribble past.
He's mentioned that Moyes has tasked him with adding more goals and assists and that's understandable because he's currently not affecting things around goal much at all.
Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how this develops over the season, and I'll be particularly fascinated to see if he manages to get on the ball more as perhaps his teammates start looking for him, and he starts really controlling games. But this is a profile of a kid who is looking to do something positive with the ball a staggering amount of the times he gets it, and often succeeding. He's looking real good.
He's played enough now for there to be some data available, here's the link for him this Championship season:
Harrison Armstrong Scouting Report for 2025-2026 Championship | FBref.com
Compare Harrison Armstrong to others in passing, goal scoring, attacking, defense and more for the 2025-2026 Championship
fbref.com
Main caveat: 500 minutes is still an extremely small sample size
Headline info: pretty incredible for an 18 year old in his first ~6 games at a new club.
One important thing to bear in mind when reading it is his touches and passes received are pretty low. Sometimes that means a player is poor at being in the right place at the last time and games can pass them by, which is common with young players, but in this instance it's more likely a function of the team he's playing in and style of play - all their midfielders do. In any case, it's something you can fairly confidently say both elsewhere and as he gets older.
This means a lot of his numbers will be fairly heavily suppressed by simply not being on the ball as much. But! And this is a huge but! He still has REALLY GOOD numbers in lots of areas. That's incredible again considering his age and being new in a team. On-ball things that really stand out to me:
Progressive carries
Carries into final third
Progressive passes
Passes into penalty area
These are all above average, some of them enormously so. When you adjust for the amount of touches he has, you're talking stratospheric in some of them. A great comparison is Wharton's championship season at the same age - adjusted for touches, Armstrong is slightly below in his passing forwards but WAY ahead in his carrying. These are some of the kind of stats I look at first for midfielders because it basically says: how good are they at moving the ball up the pitch and getting attacks going?
Some defensive things that stand out - he wins a stonking amount of things in the air, and is extremely hard to dribble past.
He's mentioned that Moyes has tasked him with adding more goals and assists and that's understandable because he's currently not affecting things around goal much at all.
Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how this develops over the season, and I'll be particularly fascinated to see if he manages to get on the ball more as perhaps his teammates start looking for him, and he starts really controlling games. But this is a profile of a kid who is looking to do something positive with the ball a staggering amount of the times he gets it, and often succeeding. He's looking real good.
Very interesting, thanks, you have a much better feeling and analysis for these stats than me and I must admit to a bit of scepticism with some things regarding stats. The way Armstrong lets the ball roll past him to create space for instance is not something you can put in a stat, and the comparisons with “ similar” players in the Championship is nothing like I’ve seen eg Matty James plays deeper , is better at using his experience to break up attacks but doesn’t have the legs to get forward like Armstrong does.For the stats inclined, and do feel free to skip over this post if the word stats just made you involuntarily shout 'utter woke nonsense' over your cornflakes...
He's played enough now for there to be some data available, here's the link for him this Championship season:
Harrison Armstrong Scouting Report for 2025-2026 Championship | FBref.com
Compare Harrison Armstrong to others in passing, goal scoring, attacking, defense and more for the 2025-2026 Championship
Main caveat: 500 minutes is still an extremely small sample size
Headline info: pretty incredible for an 18 year old in his first ~6 games at a new club.
One important thing to bear in mind when reading it is his touches and passes received are pretty low. Sometimes that means a player is poor at being in the right place at the last time and games can pass them by, which is common with young players, but in this instance it's more likely a function of the team he's playing in and style of play - all their midfielders do. In any case, it's something you can fairly confidently say both elsewhere and as he gets older.
This means a lot of his numbers will be fairly heavily suppressed by simply not being on the ball as much. But! And this is a huge but! He still has REALLY GOOD numbers in lots of areas. That's incredible again considering his age and being new in a team. On-ball things that really stand out to me:
Progressive carries
Carries into final third
Progressive passes
Passes into penalty area
These are all above average, some of them enormously so. When you adjust for the amount of touches he has, you're talking stratospheric in some of them. A great comparison is Wharton's championship season at the same age - adjusted for touches, Armstrong is slightly below in his passing forwards but WAY ahead in his carrying. These are some of the kind of stats I look at first for midfielders because it basically says: how good are they at moving the ball up the pitch and getting attacks going?
Some defensive things that stand out - he wins a stonking amount of things in the air, and is extremely hard to dribble past.
He's mentioned that Moyes has tasked him with adding more goals and assists and that's understandable because he's currently not affecting things around goal much at all.
Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how this develops over the season, and I'll be particularly fascinated to see if he manages to get on the ball more as perhaps his teammates start looking for him, and he starts really controlling games. But this is a profile of a kid who is looking to do something positive with the ball a staggering amount of the times he gets it, and often succeeding. He's looking real good.
I’m also , in my mind, comparing him with last season at Derby and how is he improving. So I found your comment on touches/ passes received being low as an interesting one. At Derby he was playing deeper and often moved towards a player in trouble and received the ball coming back to him . Last night , playing further forward, I thought he moved into space well giving often a sideways option rather than a backward option and seemed to receive the ball more. He made a lot of enthusiastic runs last night but never received the ball, often these were optimistic runs with in reality not much chance of him getting the ball. An area he will improve on and maybe his number of touches will increase as he learns and Preston players develop more trust in him. Thanks again , it’s always valuable to get a perspective of an area I’m not very knowledgeable about.
Thanks, I appreciate your thoughtful reply.
For what it's worth, I think scepticism is very important when it comes to any sort of player analysis - we can misinterpret stats just as much as we can be tricked by our eyes and vice versa. Your example of Armstrong letting the ball roll is a great example - largely, unless you have access to the real cutting edge stuff that only some clubs have, stats will tell you the what, but not the why. His awareness of space and when he can let the ball roll across him might be one of his major tools in putting up excellent progressive carry numbers: he receives under pressure, rolls his marker, and carries into space, doing something that someone without that skill wouldn't be able to. So you have to watch him live to figure out: why is he able to do that more than most players?
Anyway, he does things that good players do. If he continues to get better at them and can keep doing them at the same rate as he gets more involved with games, things will be looking very good indeed.
Armstrong is a CM, you dont move a lad like him to the wing.
Can we implement some kind of ban on Comparisons, he's a young talent out on loan. All Comparisons do is build up hope and raise the bar of expectations, which in turn could end being the stick that beats him if he hasn't reached that bar by christmas..
Let Armstrong be Armstrong..
Let Armstrong be Armstrong..
….saying a young player is a similar ‘type’ to a well-known predecessor is absolutely fine. It’s not saying he’ll reach that standard. I actually think it’s a useful link, you’ll see lots of it in the Youth Team thread.
….of course he’s not a ‘winger’ but my question is could he be more effective on the right of a midfield than Dibling during AFCON?
We need cover for Ndiaye (I actually think Senegal could go all the way to the final), Dibling is the only conventional replacement but if he continues to fall short then Moyes will have to look at alternatives. McNeil I suppose if he’s still here.
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