I used data to find Liverpool a replacement for Roberto Firmino. A thread

Firstly, in order to find a replacement for Firmino, we need to find a player whose played in a similar system. To do this, I used a team similarity tool, using PCA to judge how similar teams were to each other based on a few categories.

The categories the tool took into account were:

- Pressures p90
- % of pressures in bottom/middle/final 3rd
- % of passes that were long/short/med
- Average pass length
- Team dribbles per touch
- Team passes per touch
- Possession
- Tackles/Interceptions

+ Some other stuff

This is the graph that came out, with the distance between each team representing the similarity in play style between them

Based on that criteria, these are the 20 most similar teams to Liverpool compared to the rest of Europe

Now that we've limited the search for our Thiago replacement to players who are in similar teams, we'll search these teams for player who scores similarly to Firmino based on his very unique play style.

A similar player to Firmino was looked for on the teams above based on these categories:

- Avg pass length
- % of touches in bottom/mid/final 3rd
- dribbles, passes, carries and shots p/ touch
- % of passes that are short/med/long/key/into box/progressive
- Tkls/ints/press's p90

These 17 players (U27) came out on top out of the 20 teams searched:

There were more midfielders/wingers than I'd have expected, but I guess that shows Firmino's uniqueness as a player, it's unsurprising that he was also predominantly a midfielder before moving to Liverpool.

After filtering out the players that scored poorly in the 2 similarity tests. This is what remains.

We also sort the remaining 10 by @lgopfelix 's Impact score, which measures how good a player is by how often he plays and the quality of his team.

Then we can filter out the top 5 of these players based on Impact Score, to get an non-biased idea of how good each player is.

Based on viability, financial, ability related factors I've ranked the 5 on who I think would be the best transfer.

5th: Cristian Pulisic

He's last because the transfer doesn't actually make any logical sense. It's a bit of a positional mismatch and the transfer is financially unrealistic.

Great player nonetheless

4th: Nicolo Zaniolo

Another positional mismatch here. and having been involved in 2 ACL injuries in the last 2 years, it would be a red flag for Liverpool as of now

3rd: Christopher Nkunku

Though it's definitely too early for him to spearhead the attack for such a huge club, I'm sure Liverpool, amongst other clubs have taken notice of the highly talented Frrench youngster.

2nd: Joao Felix

Yes, he's still young, but the talent Felix possesses is undeniable. He has the full package to be Firmino's successor at Liverpool, but whether they can grab him off Atletico is another question entirely.

1st: Paulo Dybala

He fits the team, he's talented, and he's ready, this transfer seems perfect. and having fallen out with the Juventus hierarchy, it wouldn't be too hard for Liverpool to pull off.

Conclusion:

Finding a replacement for a player like Firmino is hard, and you have to think

Is it even worth sticking to the same system?

Maybe opting for a new mould of player would help freshen the XI?

But regardless, I hope this has been interesting.

Thanks for reading