The summer transfer window is open and silly season has already started in the Premiership with transfer rumours. It seems Saudi Arabia is intent on poaching as many world stars as it can to kick start their league gravitas and this is driving up prices. This Saudi discussion is for another article, but remember that this is not far off the model the US took to get their league up and running with talent, marketing etc. Just the Saudis have more money and an accelerated timeline!
Fulham performed well above many people's expectations on a return to the Premiership last season, and it could have been even better if not for Mitrovic's lengthy ban. So it makes sense they want to consolidate, keep their best players and uplift their squad where they can. Newcastle have turned into the poster club for how to elevate a club in a short period of time. Chatting to many fans at The Cottage, it is widely thought that other than maybe Mitrovic, Palhinha was Fulham's most important player last season and a big reason why they surprised many with their league position. In a BBC Sport poll of player-of-the-season, he received a huge 68% of the vote, so the fans obviously see his value.
With teams sniffing around for a ball-playing defensive-minded midfielder (many have seen the difference that Casemiro has made to Man United) and Delcan Rice seeming to be the most prized DCM for sale during this transfer window (he certainly plays that defensive-minded role for England), Fulham have reportedly slapped a £90m price tag on Palhinha.
As such I am fairly sure they do not want to sell him at all, but is the reported £90m price tag just supposed to be a 'silly number' that would warn off any possible suitors (and anyone actually paying it would allow them to transform their team), or is it a valuation that Fulham genuinely believe represents his worth? With Rice being talked about in the same ballpark of valuation, it would be interesting to:
1) See how both compare vs each other and also the rest of the Premiership midfielders
2) See how Palhinha performed within the Fulham team last season
What makes comparing the two players viable is that Fulham and West Ham are not wildly different teams, both will have roughly the same expectations next year and both try to play the same type of football. So the DCM would be expected in both teams to have the same role and have the same opportunities for boosting various stats.
So to see how Palhinha compares to Rice, other Premiership midfielders and also his Fulham teammates, below is a breakdown of statistical analyses based on the core attributes a DMC is expected to have. Stats used have been taken from the ww.fbref.com website, which is fed by Opta data. Players that had clocked up less than the equivalent of 5 full games over the whole season were excluded from the analysis.
Defence and retention
If we look at the defensive side of things, the first attribute is the disruptor: making and winning tackles to get possession back. Palhinha made 2.41 successful tackles per 90 mins, which is the most for any midfielder in the Premiership, and only 2nd to Arsenal's Takehiro Tomiyasu for any player in the Premiership. Delcan Rice surprisingly only made 1.04 successful tackles per 90 mins, which is only 81st= amongst Premiership midfielders.
When compared to other Fulham players, Palhinha successfully tackles at a rate at least double of any other Fulham player, other than the forward Manor Solomon (1.88) and defender Kenny Tete (1.61).
The other way of getting possession back, possibly, is to win aerial battles for the ball. Palhinha clocks in with a 64.5% win rate, with Rice managing 58.7%. That puts Palhinha in 35th= of all Premiership players, but more importantly, he was 5th of all Premiership Midfielders. ManC's Rodri, who is at the top end of just about all the stats we will look at, was the top midfielder with 69.2%.
Within the Fulham squad, Palhinha was only beaten by 1 defender: Adarabioyo.
Once the ball is won, the key is keeping possession before something can be done with it, so we will next look at being dispossessed. Palhinha got dispossessed 0.81 times per 90 mins, whereas Rice performed slightly better with a rate of 0.71. Neither is anywhere near the 'irresponsible' end of the Premiership statistics. Leicester's Nampalys Mendy was the standout Premiership midfielder, with a rate of only 0.12 dispossessions per 90 mins.
Within Fulham, only the keeper, the 4 defenders (both as you would expect) and midfielder Harrison Reed protected the ball better than Palhinha.
Passing
The main function of the deep ball-winning midfielder is to pass it off once won, so let's look at passing next. For exceptional DMC's their job is not just to pass the ball off, but progressively and incisively pass the ball. The first stat is arguably the most important which is the player moving the team up the pitch with general progressive passing (where the ball is successfully passed towards the opposition goal). Palhinha managed 126 yards on average per 90 mins, whereas Rice shows his value with double at 260 yards. When benchmarking to the rest of the Premiership, Chelsea's Enzo Fernandez leads midfielders with an average of 424 yards per 90 mins, with Rice being ranked 15th amongst all these midfielders.
When it comes to Fulham, all the defenders have larger average progressive passing, and in midfield, Tom Cairney and Andreas Pereria have better stats than Palhinha.
When we start looking at the accuracy of passing, this is where Rice starts really showing his value. In the short game (passes up to 15 yards), Palhinha made 87.8% of his passes, whereas Rice made 90.0%. The mid-range (15 to 30 yards) really shows the difference, with Palhinha making 85.7%, whereas Rice made 93.2%. At long-range (over 30 yards) Palhinha made 68.2%, whereas Rice made 68.8%.
When it comes to comparing to the rest of the Premiership, Rice is 22nd for short passing accuracy amongst midfielders, but when it comes to the mid-range, only Man City's Rodri can beat Rice for accuracy. Rodri leads at long-range as well with an insane 84.7% accuracy, with Rice coming in at 23rd amongst midfielders.
Part of an elite DCM is to inject urgency into play by getting the ball forward if there have been a few safe passes around. This is known as playing a progressive pass (successfully passing at least 10 yards further towards the opposition's goal than the last 6 passes, but it needs to start outside the defensive 40% of the pitch). Palhinha managed 2.93 progressive passes on average per 90 mins, whereas Rice managed more than double at 6.59. Ignoring Jorginho who seemed to suddenly start playing far better when he moved to Arsenal but very poorly at Chelsea (so his aggregated stats are not a leader, although his Arsenal ones are), it was Jorginho's replacement, Enzo Fernandez, who was the most progressive passer with 9.77 successful passes on average per 90 mins over the whole season. Rice was 19th of the Premiership midfielders. Granted that many of those ahead of him statistically play higher up the pitch (so more of their passes will likely start outside of the defensive 40% of the pitch), but still, the likes of Fernandez, Partey, Henderson, Rodri, Gross, Milner and Hojbjerg were all ahead of Rice.
Within Fulham, Palhinha is actually behind all 5 of the fullbacks and wingbacks; midfielders Cairney, Pereira and Harrison; and forwards Willian, Solomon and Wilson.
Another way of getting their team on the front foot would be to pass into the final 1/3, and Palhinha managed this 3.42 times on average per 90 mins. Rice again is ahead with an average rate nearly double of 6.40. Rice is 9th of all Premiership midfielders, with Fernandez also heading up midfielders in this stat.
Within the Fulham squad, Palhinha was only behind defenders Ream and Adarabioyo and midfielder Cairney in passes into the final 1/3 which shows his value to Fulham, albeit not as leading in all the Premiership.
Ball Carrying
So if Palhina is not passing progressively as much as Rice, nor with as much accuracy, then maybe he is adding value through progressively dribbling with the ball (progressive carries work in the same way as progressive passes other than the dribble needs to finish in the opposing half).
If we look at the total amount of positive yards dribbled with the ball per 90 mins, Palhinha managed only 27.1 yards. Rice is very much at the other end of the spectrum, with 134.5 yards. That puts Rice 6th amongst all Premiership midfielders, with Man City's Bernardo Silva leading the pack with 143.8 yards per 90 mins.
Palhinha is right at the bottom end of the Fulham squad, with only Vinicius making less positive distance with the ball per 90 mins.
Given the above stat, there is not much point looking at other dribbling types of stats, like progressive carries, carries into the opposition 1/3 and dribbles into the opposition's box, where Palhinha's numbers are also very low. But looking at Rice's numbers, as the stats refer to areas of the pitch closer and closer to the opposition goal, Rice's position amongst Premiership midfielders steadily decreases, which does give credence to the fact he does operate in that DMC-type role. Rice still is comfortably above Palhinha in each of these stats.
Summary
So it seems that Palhinha is exceptional at what he does well, which is winning the ball. But it is Rice who is exceptional when it comes to doing something productive with the ball from deep. Given that Rice excels at both passing and dribbling, and the margins with Palhinha are quite large in these regards in many cases, whereas he gives up 1.37 successful tackles and some aerial dominance per game, there is some element of value that Rice has over Palhinha.
There are other factors being taken into consideration when trying to determine an appropriate valuation for a player:
- Age: Palhinha is 27 years old and thus in his prime of abilities, whereas Rice is 24 and still has expected improvement in his game.
- Nationality: Other than the Saudi League and less than a handful of European teams, the Premiership is the only place that can afford big money transfers currently. As such, with Rice being English, this also provides extra value in the Premiership market with restrictions on the number of foreign players in Premiership squad registrations.
- Playing style: on average, players that are more attacking in their nature tend to be more valuable than those that are defensive. Given the above, we can deduce Palhinha is more defensive and Rice is more attacking.
So with bids for Rice reported as being tabled or prepared by Arsenal and Man City worth between £90 - £100m, we can baseline the value of Rice at those figures. Given the above analysis, £90m seems top-heavy for Palhinha, but he still holds a high tariff for his rock-solid defensive capabilities. So this certainly feels like a 'hands-off' squad transformative valuation.
Many Premiership teams have a genuine worry with Saudi teams suddenly swooping in and buying prized assets from teams across the Premiership. These are not just all older players: Wolves' Ruben Neves was bought by Al-Hilal for around £47m. Those outside the top bracket of clubs are more vulnerable as they are not able to compete with the wages the Saudi teams can offer and don't have the allure of European completion to counterbalance any deficit in wages on offer.
I expect many clubs to follow Fulham's lead and put 'hands-off' valuations on their key players. Only today Forest have reportedly put a £100m 'hands-off' pricetag on Brennan Johnson who they desperately want to keep hold of.
This type of preventative public pricing performs a secondary purpose which is closer to home. This aims to stop some bids which are perceived as unethical or unsporting as they seek to turn a key player's head to get the player to do some of the work for them within the target club having publically dangled a lucrative move in front of them. At worst, there is no genuine desire for the player, it is merely to cause disruption at a rival club.
I suspect more public protective pricing will follow.
Please let me know below if you agree with the analysis above and also the sentiments around preventative pricing. Please also subscribe below!