In-form Sporting Lisbon midfielder Bruno Fernandes has in the last few weeks been linked with moves to some of the top clubs in the world, with the summer transfer window just a couple of months from beginning.
The latest of those clubs is English giants Manchester United, who have in the last 24 hours, according to various different sources, made contact with the agent of the 24-year-old Portugal international. The Red Devils certainly appear to be leading the race to land his signature.
With just one loss, coming to PSG in the UEFA Champions League, in the reign of Ole Gunnar Solakjaer so far, 11 wins, a whopping 30 goals scored and options such as Paul Pogba, Juan Mata and Jesse Lingard, to name a few, available in attacking midfield. It’s a wonder why they want to bolster the position by signing Fernandes.
But it appears they certainly do. So today, in light of the news, we’re going to compare the Portuguese to the Manchester club’s star attack-minded midfielder Paul Pogba in a statistics-driven tactical analysis.
Statistical comparison
Our comparison, a statistical one, is going to be made using the below image, which comes from our good friends over at whoscored.com.
In the graphic is attacking statistics from the league season thus far, in the Liga NOS for Fernandes and in the Premier League for Pogba. It’s these stats that we’re going to base our comparison on. With our first two figures revealing that, marginally, the latter has made more appearances and played more minutes than the former in 2018/2019 thus far.
However, there’s nothing to separate them in terms of goals, 11 each, meaning that Fernandes would bring the same kind of goal threat from midfield to Old Trafford, Meanwhile, Pogba is slightly more creative with just the one more assist.
The two players separated by just one year in age trade blow-for-blow for the next four stats, Pogba with more shots per game, Fernandes with key passes per game, Pogba with more dribbles and Fernandes with more fouls drawn. But, after we see that they average the same amount of offsides per match, the 11-cap Portugal man claims our final three stats, including, impressively, the average WhoScored match rating with 7.74 to his 7.53.
Summary
In conclusion, when we total up the scores of the comparison, we see that Fernandes has won six individual stats and Pogba has won seven. For the 24-year-old to be so close to the 25-year-old given how amazing he’s been in recent times, is eye-catching, indeed.
Whilst many will argue that the first division of Portugal is a much easier league to play in, these stats prove that Fernandes could well give Pogba a run for his money. If they aren’t to play as a double-act for the Red Devils, they could serve to motivate one-and-other, hugely increasing the quality of the team’s midfield.
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