Scotland has produced an array of full-back talents in recent years with Nathan Patterson becoming the latest full-back export from the Scottish Premiership when Everton snapped up the right-back from Rangers in January.
Although yet to make his mark on Merseyside, Patterson follows in the footsteps of the likes of Andy Robertson, who moved from Dundee United to Liverpool, via Hull City, and Kieran Tierney, who joined Arsenal from Celtic in 2019.
19-year-old Aaron Hickey could also join the Scottish full-back contingent in the Premier League next season too, with Arsenal said to be one of a number of clubs lining up a summer move for the former Hearts man following his impressive form at Serie A side Bologna over the past two seasons.
With this year’s Scottish Premiership now over, I’ve picked out three young players from this season’s campaign who might be the next Scottish full-back in line for a big move, using data to assess their performances.
The dataset I have used for this data analysis includes all full-backs and wing-backs who have played a minimum of 1,000 minutes in this year’s Scottish Premiership.
The data is retrieved from Wyscout, and Python is used to convert the per 90-minute numbers into percentile ranks. The percentile ranks are then presented in a pizza chart to visualise their performance across several key metrics.
#1 Calvin Ramsey (18-years-old) – Aberdeen
No real surprise who I’ve picked out first here. Widely expected to leave for the Premier League this summer, Aberdeen’s Calvin Ramsey has had a breakthrough year, catching the eye of elite clubs across Europe despite the Dons below-par season.
Ramsey, who has played right-back in Aberdeen’s 4-2-3-1/4-3-3 this season, profiles as a modern full-back with very impressive numbers for attacking metrics.
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