Mohammed Salisu 2021/22: The centre-back drawing attention in the Premier League – scout report

Mohammed Salisu arrived at Southampton from Real Valladolid in the summer of 2020 for a small fee of around £10 million. At the age of 22, Salisu is having an impressive season in the Premier League and is establishing himself as arguably the most impressive young centre-back in the league. Last season he featured rarely for the Saints with only 15 appearances in all competitions. This season, Hassenhuttl placed his faith in the young Ghanian defender and that faith is certainly being restored now. In recent weeks Southampton has recorded some impressive results with victory against Tottenham Hotspur and two draws against Manchester City and Manchester United. In these games, Salisu was instrumental in their defensive performance and has since gained a lot of praise and attention.

This scout report and tactical analysis will take a look into Salisu’s game and the reasons why is he having such an impressive season.

Data

The importance of data in football is ever-growing and this is particularly the case for assessing and evaluating individual performances. In this analysis, we will look at some important metrics for assessing defenders and see how Salisu ranks amongst fellow centre-backs in the Premier League. The data shows Salisu against all Premier League centre-backs with a minimum of 500 minutes for their club this season. Both attacking and defensive contributions will be assessed in this data section.

Firstly, lets take a look at Salisu’s defensive duels and the win percentage of these duels. The below graph shows these two metrics plotted. As shown below Salisu engages in a lot of defensive duels with around 8 defensive duels per 90. He has a slightly below average win percentage in these duels with a win percentage of 66%. With such a high volume of duels having a slightly lower win percentage is ok and still makes him effective.

In addition, to defensive duels, we will look at successful defensive actions and possession adjusted (PAdj) interceptions. These are two metrics that Salisu excels at, recording 8.2 PAdj interceptions per 90 and 11.6 successful defensive actions per 90. Salisu is amongst the best league performers in these metrics.

Th