Liverpool may have finally found a successor for Gini Wijnaldum in Newcastle midfielder Joe Willock.
Many Liverpool supporters believe they have never completely replaced Wijnaldum. The Dutch midfielder was crucial to their success under Jurgen Klopp, and things haven’t been the same since he left.
Replacing a player with such intensity, technical skill, and athleticism is a difficult task, but The Athletic has used data to speculate on who Liverpool could sign.
The study employed Smarterscout data to discover a player with identical traits and statistics to Wijnaldum, settling on two specific players.
Pedri, a Barcelona midfielder who could be an unreasonable target for Liverpool, was one of them. The second was Newcastle midfielder Willock, who was a surprising choice.
Willock has come a long way since leaving Arsenal, and there’s no reason he couldn’t join a club like Liverpool in the future. Modern clubs scout players using a lot of data, so there’s a strong chance they’ll come across Willock when looking for a new midfielder.
