On the back of promising performances in pre-season friendlies against York City and Liverpool, Régis Le Bris is going to have a midfield selection dilemma ahead of the new season.
Granit Xhaka, Habib Diarra and Noah Sadiki all showed their class at the World Cup, with Sadiki and Diarra standing out — Diarra bagging a couple of goals for Senegal and Sadiki shining in DR Congo’s defeat to England in the round of sixteen.
Whilst these lads are currently on holiday and enjoying a well-deserved break after
successful World Cup campaigns, there’s an opportunity afoot for other lads to work their way into Le Bris’ thinking going into the opening game against Ipswich Town.
Chris Rigg and Enzo Le Fée have been deployed in central positions during our two pre-season fixtures and have been standout performers. Rigg has clearly been on a fitness programme over the summer and has come back a couple of pounds stronger, whereas Le Fée has picked up where he left off at the back end of last season, scoring a fantastic solo strike against Liverpool on Saturday night.
The few games that we played last season without Xhaka in the starting eleven showed just how much we struggle without him, and although he’s a certainty to be the first name on the team sheet most weeks, he’s coming into the twilight of his career and will not be able to play up to potentially fifty games if we have a successful season.
Diarra is our record signing and came in with a lot of pressure on his shoulders and will be expected to start most weeks too. Sadiki may not be the most technically gifted of our midfielders, but equally, he’s our most important with the energy he brings, and I believe he’s too important to be dropped.
There’s a worst-case scenario in which we shoehorn Rigg and Le Fée into the team by playing them both out on the wings, which was a position of concern for us last season. Although they’ve shown they can be competent in those positions, their impact on the game lessens and we lose the quality that they possess playing centrally.
We didn’t get to see much of Le Fee in a central position at the start of the season due to how well the other three midfield signings started, and it was only during the latter stages of the season where he could really show his quality in the middle of the pitch.
Le Fee’s naturally technical ability is obvious and how he can drive with the ball due to his low centre of gravity provides a level of class, yet something that tends to go unnoticed is his off-the-ball work.
We often see players of similar quality who tend not to do the ugly side of the game and just operate in the attacking third of the pitch, but Le Fée is often the one initiating the press or making tackles on the edge of our own box, and he’s also more than comfortable with being asked to play a deeper role.
With Rigg’s ability to carry the ball and receive on the half-turn and still the fact that he’s still only eighteen, there’s plenty of sell-on value and throwing him into midfield to compete against some of the world’s best in that position will not do him or the club any harm.
Diarra’s pace and power combined with his ability to crash late into the box is another key quality we have.
His performances at the end of the season never quite reached the same heights as his performances before AFCON, yet he did start to shine more brightly towards the end of the season as an impact player off the bench as Le Bris started to attack teams more.
Diarra often found himself in a hybrid role between a right winger and a box-to-box midfielder operating in the half spaces on the right-hand side; the Everton away game sticks out in particular for this, with the assist he provided for Wilson Isidor’s winner.
We do tend to see a lot of flexibility in Le Bris’ system, in particular Trai Hume’s hybrid role between a right winger and a right wing back, and we often see frequent rotations when in possession.
Of course, there’s also the option of Alan Browne.
Many could argue that he hasn’t shown much to suggest that he’s a competent operator at this level. But again, we have someone who can play a couple of positions, which he demonstrated he was competent enough to do last season, as well as being an experienced head that can bring a level of calmness to things and would be a great asset to have for Europa League games.
Middlesbrough fans were disappointed when he left and seem disappointed that he will not be returning there permanently.
Each of our current crop of midfielders brings different qualities to the team which can help to make us unpredictable and give us options later in games and this is even before one or two signings in the transfer window to get some extra bodies through the door. This gives us flexibility to tweak the lineup based on the opposition.
There’ll be plenty of opportunities for these lads with a Europa League campaign on the horizon and potentially fifty games to come during the upcoming season.
