Moneyball scouting - Christopher Martins Pereria

A while ago I looked for how the principles of 'Moneyball' might be applied to football. One of my suggestions was to look for players with blocked pathways to the first team. This might be young players at elite clubs, or players where the first team spot is taken up by an excellent player.

I randomly picked Lyon as my team to look at.

They have a thriving youth academy, and lots of very good young midfielders. So is there anyone in their squad who is good but not quite Ndombele good?

At the same time I've been using some good new data sets. And one name keeps coming up in my search for Ndombele like midfielders.

In a happy coincidence that players happens to be on Lyon's books.

Christopher Martins Pereira - Luxembourg and Troyes (on loan from Lyon)

21 year old Christopher is a 6ft 2 tall midfielder who can also play centre back.

The majority of his games are as a defensive central midfield player.

This season has been a breakout in terms of production with 2 goals and 4 assists.

He has over 30 caps for Luxembourg and impressed in the Nations League in a more defensive role with plenty of interceptions and tackles.

The driving runs from midfield are there too with twice the average number of dribbles, and 3x the number of fouls drawn as the average Ligue 2 midfielder. Passing is above average.

The most impressive thing about him is the improvement over the last year with him moving to a more forward thinking role with Troyes compared to his time at Lyon II and Bourg-en-Bresse. 

He has been good enough to be offered contracts with Lyon, but will be 22 soon, and is still nowhere near the first team, with his contract only having 16 months remaining on it.

As luck would have it somebody created a Youtube video of him and posted it today! Looks decent to the eye too. Looks like he has everything you would need in a top level Championship midfield. 

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