Liverpool may have finally found their Wijnaldum replacement in Newcastle star
Liverpool may have finally found their Gini Wijnaldum replacement in Newcastle midfielder Joe Willock.
An issue amongst Liverpool fans is a lot of them feel they’ve never truly replaced Wijnaldum. The Dutch midfielder played a pivotal role in their success under Jurgen Klopp, and it hasn’t quite been the same since he departed.
Replacing a player with so much energy, technical ability and athleticism isn’t an easy take, but The Athletic have used data to try and figure out who Liverpool could sign.
The study used Smarterscout data to find a player with similar attributes and statistics to Wijnaldum, landing on two players in particular.
One of those was Barcelona midfielder Pedri, possibly an unrealistic target for Liverpool. The second of those was Newcastle midfielder Willock – a surprising selection.
Willock has pushed on and developed immensely since leaving Arsenal, so there’s no reason he couldn’t get a move to a club like Liverpool in the future. Modern clubs use a lot of data when scouting players, so there’s a good chance they could come across Willock in their pursuit of a new midfielder.
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