Saint-Maximin offers everything Leicester’s wingers don’t, Foxes should bid

Harvey Barnes has completed only 37 dribbles this season, that’s an average of 1.6 per 90 minutes of football. Ayoze Pérez is slightly better, as this season, the converted Spanish-winger has completed 44 dribbles, an average of 1.97 per 90 minutes. Without a comparison these numbers mean very little – out of wingers in the Premier League this season, Barnes ranks 28th for the aforementioned metric – Pérez is 24th. Given that sides in the Premier League tend to use two wingers, and these are the starting wingers for the Foxes – ordinarily – this is very poor. For further clarity that Leicester City truly lack a player with these qualities, Gray ranks in 29th and Albrighton 40th.

Interestingly, Barnes’ profile is more of an “inside forward”, as almost all of his play is in the final third (71.25% of his touches come in this area) and he’s managed a lot of shots on target per 90 minutes of football (1.17). However, he does need to work on increasing the amount of goals he scores from these chances, as currently, Barnes has the worst differential between goals and xG (expected goals) in the entire Leicester City squad. He ended the season with 6 goals, but given the chances he had throughout the season, he had an xG of 8.2.