Agreed, it's the most blatant issue staring us in the face. The funny thing is that if you look at expected assists numbers, two players stand out as being under-appreciated - Bolasie (PL 16/17) and Deulofeu (PL 15/16, AND Serie A 16/17 - very consistent). We had both, lost both, and didn't replace them. In the case of the latter we even purposely froze him out.
To be fair Balde turned down us and Tottenham I believe because he wanted someone bigger (Juve, or Monaco it turns out).
Not buying Iheanacho is even more hilarious in retrospect looking at our striker situation, buyback clause or not.
Just to expand on the bit about Deulofeu and Bolasie.
Expected Assists (or xA) takes into account passes that a player makes, and how often in the ENTIRE league history since stats were recorded that pass would end up in an assist (so it tracks where the passes came from, and where they ended up). Each pass is assigned a number from 0 to 1 (i.e, that pass has never resulted in an assist, and that pass has always resulted in an assist - so a pass with an xA of 0.5 has, half the time it's been made in the PL, resulted in an assist). It's a more advanced 'key passes' stat which essentially grades the quality of a player's attacking passing while stripping it from being affected by things like the receiver's shooting ability.
Anyway.
Here's the top 10 players in xA per 90 mins who played more than 600 mins in the PL in 15/16:
Note Deulofeu, and note also the company he's keeping there.
Here he is playing for Milan last season (same deal, only players who played more than 600 mins):
Again, look at the company he's keeping there. These players aren't cherry-picked, they're just who the stats are throwing up. I don't care if he's only good for 60 minutes (although I have major issues with that statement anyway) - if you have that player in a team lacking creativity, you play him. Hell, you probably play him anyway even if you aren't. Especially if he's clearly bucked his ideas up and has started working hard and tracking back.
Here's last season - note Bolasie:
He was playing really, really well before he got injured. Whether that was due to Koeman using him in a certain way or just being on a hot streak, I don't know - he's never shown up anywhere near that high in previous seasons.
Basically, we had two players on our books with the possibility of genuinely creating goals for us. We lost both - once on purpose - and didn't replace either. Oh, and they were both fast too, something else we haven't replaced.
@orly @Timak blah blah
