PLAYER ANALYSIS: CURTIS JONES
This article aims to give an overview on a young player i feel doesn’t get the appreciation he deserves. Data used for this analysis were from last season(2020/2021) and gotten from FBREF.
PROFILE
Born on the 30th of January 2001, Curtis Jones is a product of Liverpool FC academy. He made his debut for the first team on the 7th of January 2019 in an FA Cup game against Wolves. One can say he started getting noticed after that cracking goal against Everton in the FA Cup on the 5th of January 2020. Although he played as an attacking midfielder during his early years in the academy, Jones currently operates primarily as a central midfielder for Jurgen Klopp’s side. He can fill in either the right or left central midfield. One of his best attributes is his close control and willingness to carry the ball up the pitch. His dribbling ability is sometimes under the radar as well. This article highlights some of his attributes and shows how he compares to fellow U-21 midfielders during the 2020/2021 season. Just like every new player that joins Klopp’s side, Jones has been integrated into the first team set up slowly. With every season that passes, it seems his contribution to the team increases as well.
Key areas that would be discussed are Touches, Dribbling, Passing and Defensive Actions.
TOUCHES
For the amount of minutes/90 Jones played, he had quite a lot of touches when compared to other U-21 midfielders around Europe who play similar roles to Jones and also had similar game time. Jones played about 13 minutes/90 over the course of last season (in the Premier League) and he had about 1122 touches. This shows how brave he is. He is always looking for ways to be involved and also create spaces for himself as well.
Breaking down his touches based on area of the pitch, we can see most of Jones touches are in the middle of the park which is expected for a CM. As stated earlier, Jones started off as an Attacking midfielder who operates higher up the field, so it comes with no surprise that his touches in the attacking 3rd is significantly higher when compared to touches in defensive 3rd. Touches in the attacking penalty box is quite low, this may be because in Klopp’s team, the major role central midfielders play is to recycle possession and also cover the flying full backs.
DRIBBLING
Another area of the game where Jones excels in is his dribbling ability. His excellent close control and ability to manuever himself in tight corners is another reason why he is higly rated by Klopp and his team. Curtis Jones attempted 29 dribbles and had a success rate of about 51%. This shows that one can say he is an effective dribbler and if he can be given more minutes on the pitch, he would be able to compete with the brightest u-21 midfielders around Europe in this aspect.
PASSING
One of the key attributes of a top midfielder is their passing ability and this is something I believe Curtis jones has excelled in so far. Last season, he attempted a total of 976 passes, completing 91.2% of them. Putting into consideration the amount of minutes played last season, one can say Jones is a player that likes to keep it moving.
A more breakdown of his passing can be found in the bar chart below. Curtis Jones is one that’s not scared in mixing his passing range. He completed about 81% of his long passes even though on can say he prefers going short most of the time.
DEFENSIVE ACTION
Curtis Jones’ defensive actions are really eye catching and from the numbers, it shows he puts in effort. One of the key characteristics of a Klopp team is pressing. Curtis has been in the team for about 2 years and it seems as if he has mastered that part of the game. He put in 200+ presses last season and LFC won possession 29% of the time. Those numbers may not be high when compared with similar U-21 midfielders, but his pressing success rate shows that Curtis Jones is an effective presser of the ball.
Another key aspect of defensive action is tackling. Although tackling isn’t his primary job in Klopp’s system, but in modern football, managers would require their midfielders to be competent in that area. There’s definitley room for improvement for Jones in terms of tackling. His low numbers in this aspect comes with no surprise considering the fact that Jones is a player who started out as an attacking midfielder. Despite the low number of tackles, just pressures, Jones is also an effective tackler winning about 43% of tackles attempted. With more game time and more responsibility given to him in LFC, i foresee him developing in this aspect.
CONCLUSION
At the moment, Jones isn’t mentioned among the likes of Pedri, Camavinga and Tchouameni. But from the numbers, it shows that he deserves a place in that conversation and one way to achieve this is with more playing time. This season has started off on the right foot for Jones after a rocket against Brentford and a fantastic performance against Porto in the Champions League. A couple more of those and Jones should be regarded as one of the brightest midfield talent around.
