How Elias Sørensen Could Fit Into John Mousinho’s Portsmouth
Portsmouth have ventured into Europe and are looking to treat themselves to a Danish CF, let’s take a look at him!
General Information
Age: 24
Height: 6'2"
Name: Elias Fritjof Grænge Sørensen
Nationality: Danish
Club: Esbjerg
Position: Striker/Left winger
Preferred foot: Right
Strengths
As soon as I started watching Elias, one strength immediately leapt out at me. He is an incredibly intelligent footballer. Possessing elite levels of decision-making, vision, and composure in the final third, it’s maybe easy to look at his goals tally and see that as his biggest positive, but I wholeheartedly believe his ability to create opportunities for others is what makes him such a fantastic player. And for what it’s worth, it’s not like he can see pictures developing but not exploit them, he’s also a great technician and has that ability to thread passes through defenders, hit reverse-balls, and execute cutbacks.
As a left-sided player, Elias is really comfortable linking play and combining with teammates both when he’s pinned against the touchline and responsible for holding width, as well as when he operates in the left half-space, inside the opposition block. He’s not a player that’ll take loads of touches with his link-play, maybe one or two before playing a pass, it just massively depends on how he ‘feels’ the tempo of the match, and if it needs to increase or decrease. He loves disrupting defences with his movement and passing, which is a really valuable quality both in settled possession and in-transition.
You might look at the picture below and, understandably, maybe not think he’s got super high levels of upper-body strength, but that is far from reality. He’s got a great level of physicality to hold-off defenders, and although his back-to-goal play isn’t perfect, he has the physical abilities to make it work for him. He’s also got a nice balance in terms of his centre of gravity, and isn’t too top heavy which helps his 1 v 1 dribbling.
One attribute that’s pretty impossible to convey via still images, so I’ll do my best to describe it, is his feeling of tempo, specifically when to slow play down, and when to speed it up. This is particularly evident when he leads counter-attacks, often carrying the ball diagonally towards goal, and slowing play down just enough to allow time for runners to stretch play away from the ball, but not too slow where counters completely stagnate. Surround him with the right players, and we can be a brutal counter-attacking team. This allows him to sustain attacks in the final third, and against certain teams we really will neeed to suffocate them with meaningful possession and control, Elias can really help with that.
Development areas
Now although it’s easy to assume Sorensen is being brought in as a Colby Bishop replacement, particularly because his entire career has been playing as a striker or an inside-forward on the left, I actually believe Elias best suits being a number 10 for us, purely for the next few months. In terms of why this makes sense in order to make his strengths shine, he links play really well in the left half-space, he pairs well with Yengi when the Aussie is able to create space by pushing the opposition defence backwards, and passing & shooting angles are far more favourable for him from those areas.
Now, this segment is called ‘development areas’ so I should probably mention an area in which Elias can develop. Right now, he needs to work on his back-to-goal play, when he’s running toward goal or inverting he’s superb, but when he’s pinned by a CB he struggles. One solution he often uses is to drop deep away from the defenders early to receive the ball, this works pretty well, but heavily relies on runners in-behind, such as Paddy Lane and Josh Murphy. Kai Havertz is potentially a player he can learn from in that regard, in terms of being a player who is physically capable, but opts to drop into space early to link-play with his back to goal.
One issue with Sorensen, particularly when you take into account the step-up to the Championship is how he applies himself in loose-ball duels. He often lacks intensity and commitment to the duel, resulting in opponents getting to the ball first. Although he actually gets away with this at times in the Danish second and third tiers, he won’t get as much joy in the Championship. What’s promising however is that he doesn’t fully lack intensity or willingness to be tenacious, so it’s clearly a development that’s possible to make, potentially very quickly too. Little wins!
Although Elias is a very willing presser of the ball, bringing that tenacity and energy from the first minute of a match until the last, there is one detail he can work on. His pressing intelligence isn’t the best, there’s often moments where I don’t think he’s the most aware of his cover shadow, meaning the space that is covered by a pressing player.
In this first image, although he is effectively covering off two players, the real dangerous pass for the opposition is out to the right back. What he needs to do here really is to recognise the fact he has a teammate behind him covering the same two players he is, so I’d suggest Elias should really be curving his run to cover the passing lane to the right back.
In this second image, it’s a little trickier as play is far less congested and the space between bodies are wider, but I still think he can do a little more to funnel play to the side, rather than running flat at his man.
In terms of his play inside the box, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. I think his movement, especially in open-play, is genuinely fantastic, he loves to run off the back of defenders, he darts to the back-post and the front-post, but also knows when to stay still and let play develop around him, keeping things unpredictable.
The issue for me, and this is strange because he’s scored a boatload of goals in the Danish third tier, is that I don’t actually think his finishing is the best, specifically his shot-placement. The issues are that a lot of his shots from last season were either really central and hit straight at the keeper, or he couldn’t quite get the whip on his shots when he wanted to find the corners.
Conversion rate through the years:
21/22 (Danish second tier) — 17%
22/23 (Danish third tier) — 16%
23/24 (Danish third tier) — 24%
24/25 (Danish second tier) — 25% — Important to note we’re only two games into this season, so isn’t really that reliable yet
The natural counter to that point is ‘well how was he able to score so many goals then?’ I believe it’s mainly down to the standard of goalkeepers in that division, he won’t be able to benefit from that in the Championship, he also got the opportunity to take SO MANY open-play shots last season. What’s promising is that he obviously has brilliant movement, can sniff out chances, he’s got a pretty broad repertoire of finishes, and his finishing when he takes a moment to collect himself rather than snatching at shots is pretty impressive. He’ll score a very healthy amount of goals for us, but there are absolutely gains to be made, which is exciting in itself!
Statistics
Good mother of fucking god would you look at that pizza chart, almost every slice is deliciously appetising, oozing with flavour and delectable depth. I’m rather hungry as I’m writing this.
Now in terms of the best elements, that are also scalable, you’re looking at his expected assists, expected goals and how often he’s receiving the ball (we’ve also seen he knows how to use it once he has it!). Naturally though, the Championship is a step-up from the Danish third tier, so not all of those metrics will scale as well, particularly the number of touches he’s getting in the box, the volume of shots he’s able to get-off, and the amount of time he’ll have to play loads of passes into the box. His assist numbers will likely drop when he moves to us, but it’s important to note that this won’t be a reflection of his quality, it’s more that it’ll be impacted by the following factors:
- He will no longer be part of a side who are one of the dominant sides in their division
- He probably won’t be used as the type of creative, all-action, fulcrum he’s utilised as at Esbjerg — Despite the fact I think this can be his best role for us!
Potential line-up fit
The key to get the best out of Sorensen is to:
A) Let him roam in the left half-space and gravitate towards pockets of space in order to receive the ball
B) Platform him by surrounding him with runners: Moxon, Murphy, Yengi, Lane/Lang
C) As soon as he receives the ball, the team have to be prepared to almost always play forward
D) Give him responsibility, let him be a problem-solver and creative force for the team
In settled possession, Sorensen will be pretty effective, with an ability to both disrupt the opposition’s defensive structure by playing inside their block and quickly turning to play forward, OR, ‘rolling in’ from wide areas with carefully managed rotations with someone like a Sammy Silvera. He’s a disrupter, that’s what I’d label him as.
Where we’re really going to see the best of Elias though isn’t in settled-possession, it’s in moments of attacking transition. As we stated earlier, he is a brutal force and creator on the counter-attack, with a unique ability to craft chances both for himself, but more importantly, his teammates. If we can commit 4/5 bodies to each counter attack, whilst retaining solidity with a rest defence of Shaughnessy, Poole/McIntyre, Farrell, and Pack, we will be laughing all the way to the bank!
Conclusion
So here we are, at the end of another article about another rather cool signing by Portsmouth (providing the work permit goes through etc etc)! I believe at around 350k, this is a fantastic deal, and he’s the kind of player who’d cost millions if he was English and playing in the EFL at the moment.
Now does he have some deficiencies? Yes. But hell, don’t we all? What’s promising however is that I believe his areas for development are very attainable for him, particularly improving his finishing now he’s playing at a considerably higher level, and also having those marginal gains with his pressing intelligence.
His biggest attributes is his ability to link-play, sustain attacks via controlling tempo, and his overall game intelligence. I said it once and I’ll say it again, Elias is a DISRUPTER and problem-solver, with an ability to both create and thrive on organised chaos, an incredibly valuable skillset for our upcoming return to the Championship.
To summarise, it’s another really nifty pick-up by the club, looking to buy undervalued assets in leagues that maybe aren’t appreciated as much as they should be, so find it harder to find true value for their players. Sure, it’s a gamble, relying on Elias being able to scale his strengths, and develop his weaknesses, but at such a cheap price, I think it’s well worth the risk.
Until next time, play up Pompey, and up the Blues!
