View: Stats show Everton have ready made Digne replacement after reported injury blow
Everton defender Lucas Digne will miss the next two months after picking up an ankle injury, according to France Football.
This will come as a huge blow to Carlo Ancelotti for a number of reasons, none more obvious than the fact that the Frenchman has been one of the Toffees’ standout performers this season.
A new problem now arises for Ancelotti after he trialled a new formation in last weekend’s 3-2 win over Fulham.
The system used wing-backs and Digne excelled in this new position as he was able to get forward more often and he provided a fantastic assist for Abdoulaye Doucoure’s goal.
With the new system working so well and getting the best out of Digne you might think that Ancelotti will have to revert back to a four-man defence for the next two months.
But we believe Everton have a ready-made replacement who suits the new system and the stats prove it.
Niels Nkounkou looks set to replace Digne with the 20-year-old summer signing the only other left-back in the first team.
The young Frenchman has only made four first-team appearances and just one of those was in the Premier League but he has shown plenty of promise in those games and he could be Ancelotti’s saviour following Digne’s injury.
The stats show that Nkounkou is a fairly similar player to Digne and he could fit into this new system.
If you look at the Nkounkou’s Wyscout heatmap for the current season below you will see how high up the pitch he can get when attacking.
Below is Digne’s heatmap from this season and you can see that he hasn’t got forward as much as Nkounkou has managed.
The modern wing-back tends to be more useful going forward as well as solid in his defending and Nkounkou has matched or bettered Digne in an attacking sense this season.
It is worth noting that Digne has played more football this term and two of Nkounkou’s games came against lower league sides but the comparison is still a fair one.
According to Wyscout, Nkounkou is making 3.79 progressive runs per game on average this season which is more than double Digne’s average progressive runs of 1.85 per game.
The 20-year-old is also boasting a 70% successful dribble rate which is significantly better than Digne’s 52.9% successful dribble rate.
Digne just about edges Nkounkou on the crossing front with the 27-year-old registering a 38.9% crossing accuracy which is slightly better than Nkounkou’s 36.4% crossing accuracy.
The summer signing is also getting in the box more than Digne as Nkounkou is averaging 3.03 touches in the penalty area per game which is much more than the 0.88 touches in the penalty area per 90 minutes Digne is averaging.
Both players have exactly the same passing accuracy this season with both men completing 84.5% of their attempted passes.
Again, it is worth noting that Nkounkou racked up these stats while playing against Fleetwood and Salford but he also played 159 minutes against West Ham and Newcastle.
We also aren’t suggesting that the summer signing is as good as Digne but we think he could fit into Ancelotti’s new system as he looks to be a player shaped in a similar mode to Digne.
In other Everton news, our exclusive columnist Kevin Campbell has predicted the outcome of the Toffees’ game against Leeds this weekend.