In recent years we have witnessed a significant decrease in top-level sides playing formations which have the traditional number 10 role, and instead, many clubs have been looking for hybrids between a number 8 and a number 10. The reasoning behind this is that with the game constantly evolving, it is difficult for teams to play a player who is only involved with the ball at his feet. Given the current economic situation in football, every club will be looking for bargains and free agents in the summer, and so, through this data analysis, we will highlight some creative midfielders who are worth less than €1 million and could be interesting for teams looking to strengthen in midfield.
It is not rare to find some gems in the less popular leagues but sometimes it is difficult for clubs to cover all the relevant leagues. However, with the use of data, it is easier to find players who have performed well in a certain time span based on their statistics. In the next section, we will explain the methodology behind this piece before revealing our selections for potential bargains in the creative midfielder department.
Methodology
The Wyscout dataset we have used contains players whose main position is either as defensive midfielder, central midfielder or attacking midfielder. We have only included players who have played at least 800 minutes this season and were born after 1993. As we mentioned earlier, we have only taken those under consideration who are worth less than €1 million on Transfermarkt. Of course, given the filters, the top leagues like the Bundesliga or the Premier League are not represented here, but the likes of the Turkish Süper Lig, Croatian 1.HNL and so on have some interesting players to watch out for. Based on our criteria, we compared 454 players and shortlisted five of them who stood out in the majority of metrics we evaluated. Each highlighted player will be supported with a dashboard that will show us how he looks compared to the other players in the dataset. The second visual for each highlighted player will be his creativity map which will show us the location of his assists and successful key passes this season on the pitch.
Amar Rahmanović
Amar Rahmanović is a Bosnian offensive midfielder who plays for the Turkish Süper Lig side Konyaspor. It has taken him a lot of seasons to prove his worth and FK Sarajevo were his 9th club, but it was there that he started playing consistently at a very good level which led to his transfer to Konyaspor. Rahmanović is 192 cm tall and he is a player who looks elegant on the pitch with the ball at his feet. He operates mostly as a number 10, but has the quality to play in deeper roles when needed. However, playing behind the striker brings the best out of him as his vision and ability to facilitate come to the fore. Just by looking at the dashboard above, we can see how advanced he is in terms of creative metrics, landing in the top percentiles for most of them, but he has also shown that he is very dangerous based on the number of touches in the box, shots and xG per 90 as well.
