With Christian Pulisic’s success at Chelsea and Giovanni Reyna’s rise at Borussia Dortmund, the youth from the United States have considerably gotten more attention. One such player is Antonee Robinson, playing full-back, at Wigan Athletic. Born in England, Robinson had the choice to pick England or the United States and ultimately chose the US.
His performances at Wigan Athletic, since 2018, have caught a fair amount of eyes with the most wide-eyed being those of AC Milan. In the 2019/20 season, Robinson was on the verge of making the big-money move to the Italian side for $13 million. However, due to a heart rhythm irregularity, the move was ultimately cancelled. Clearly, there is some potential in Robinson with such a big side swooping in for a 22-year-old.
In this tactical analysis, we’ll conduct a scout report of the American to find the strengths and weaknesses of the aspiring full-back. We’ll use statistics and dissect the tactics behind the player’s potential.
Initial data check among full-backs
Before we use the footage to look at Robinson, it is worth it to conduct statistical analysis to highlight certain areas we have to look out for.
We’ll start first with crossing play and analyzing crosses amongst Championship full-backs. Before we move on, some contextual primers. In this initial data check, I am comparing Robinson to people in his age group, under-24, and considering players who have played more than 900 minutes. After our footage analysis, we’ll see how Robinson fits in with the more veteran full-backs.
In this graphic, Robinson highlights himself as a voluminous crosser with him being well-above average and being amongst the top crossers from the left. Robinson’s 3.65 crosses from the left just goes to show how frequent Robinson whips the ball in and in those 3.65 crosses, 0.45 of them find their way in the goalie box per 90. In this latter metric, Robinson is rather average as seen by the size of his dot.
However, not every crosser crosses directly in the goalie box per 90. Other crossers make cut-backs, low crosses, and short-crosses. I have shown the same graphic but this time with deep completed crosses- a metric that records crosses that put one’s teammates within 20 meters of the goal. With this new metric, we see Robinson recording a high statistic of 1.34 deep completed crosses per 90 a metric that is amongst the best as seen by the size of his dot. As such, it is safe to say that Robinsons crossing statistically is amongst the best in the Championship.
