Udinese have had an interesting season. The season started with them losing to champions Milan on the opening gameweek. Shortly after, they were on a nine game unbeaten streak which included six wins on the bounce. There were even periods where they were top of the league.
They have a squad made up of many talented youngsters such as Destiny Udogie, Jaka Bijol and Nehuén Pérez. There are also players such as Gerard Deulofeu who have found a home and with it some of the form of their life.
The main focus of this blog is to highlight undervalued players and if we are to look at numbers, then Lazar Samardžić stands out a mile. Although TransferMarkt should never be used for this purpose, his market value is estimated to be around €4.5m. This isn’t the most surprising given he is used fairly sparingly since his arrival from RB Leipzig in 2022 for around €3m.
Samardžić has appeared 20 times in total for Udinese in the league this season, on 13 of those occasions he was introduced from the bench. Usually, it is quite difficult to make such an impact when your minutes are limited to around 41 mins on average. Talisman Deulofeu has scored twice and assisted six goals this season, Samardžić on the other hand has scored four and created just one, however has played almost 400 minutes less and has started eight fewer games.
Let’s get into the in-depth numbers.
The graphic above taken from FBRef.com compares Samardžić to other midfielders in Europe’s elite divisions such as the Premier League, Bundesliga, Serie A and also the Champions League. Green highlights his best performing metrics while the more red highlights the negative metrics in his game. This data is based off the last 1,166 minutes played for Samardžić.
There are two key elements to Samardžić’s game, ball progression and playmaking abilities. We will start with the latter, which from the graph above we can see he scores very highly in. When comparing *npxG + xAG to other midfielders he scored within the 96th percentile, which equates to 0.40 per 90. From a goalscoring point of view, he has four goals this season from an xG of 1.8, meaning he is well outperforming his xG. However, when looking at his xAG vs actual assists we can see that he is underperforming – with an xAG of 2.2 and only one actual assist. So this percentile is probably being led by his goals. With that said, we move onto his shot-creating actions per 90 mins, which scores within the 99th percentile. A SCA is described as one of the two offensive actions which lead to a shot. Although it is not relative, just for reference Kevin De Bruyne makes 6.31 SCA per 90.
So, why is he so creative? That has a lot to do with his ball progression through dribbling and his ability to receive the ball in key areas. Initially, we can take a look at his successful take-ons which scores within the 93rd percentile vs other midfielders. Per 90, he achieves 1.47 STO and on watching tape of his dribbles it is clear to see why he is so successful. He is often able to change his dribbling style from a slower-paced and difficult to tackle style to a faster-paced, direct style with rangy strides. Finally, we will cover off two stats in one which showcase his ability to find space in dangerous positions. Samardžić receives on average 4.01 progressive passes per game, essentially meaning he is making himself available for a line-splitting pass, from which he is able to produce the shot-creating actions we mentioned earlier. He scores within the 86th percentile for this. In addition to this, he scores within the 93rd percentile for touches in the opposition’s area, at 2.78 per 90. In many cases, these touches could be the result of a progressive pass.
Samardžić is still within the first two years of a five year deal at Udinese, however they are using him a bit too sparingly if these numbers are anything to go by. If anyone wanted to take a chance on these numbers then a deal could certainly be struck for way below his true market value, which in our opinion is much higher than TransferMarkt have estimated. Suitable landing spots for Samardžić would include European chasing clubs, higher up the table in Italy or maybe back in his homeland of Germany.
*non-penalty expected goals + expected assisted goals
*progressive pass is defined by a pass that travels 10 yards further than its furthest point in the last 6 passes, without being within the defensive 40%.
Statswise FC 