Wolverhampton Wanderers will have two new faces in their squad when they travel to Blackburn Rovers on Sunday. And neither of their deadline-day signings were entirely conventional for a Premier League club.
Marshall Munetsi is a midfielder from Zimbabwe who is 28 — older than many players when they typically make the move he has from France’s Ligue 1, where he played for more than five seasons for Reims, to the Premier League.
Meanwhile, Nasser Djiga is a defender from Burkina Faso whose career in Europe has brought him to England via Switzerland (with Basel) and Serbia (with Crvena Zvezda, more widely known in the UK as Red Star).
But Wolves have identified Munetsi as a player who can offer Vitor Pereira an extra physical presence in midfield and Djiga as a physical central defender who can help their head coach transition his side towards the front-footed style he wants to adopt.
So what might the pair offer?
In Munetsi’s scouting report on the data website FBref, certain statistics stand out immediately.
The tool compares him against his fellow midfielders in Europe’s ‘big five’ leagues — the Premier League, Ligue 1, Serie A, La Liga and the Bundesliga — plus UEFA competitions over the last year, and the first statistic that leaps out is his goalscoring ability.
Across six seasons in Ligue 1, he managed 21 goals in 148 appearances from midfield, including four from 19 this season, and in the last year, he sits in the 90th percentile for non-penalty goals among midfielders in the big five leagues.
His non-penalty expected goals tally places him in the 95th percentile — it suggests that, with better finishing, his ability to get himself into goalscoring positions would bring even greater rewards.
His capacity to get into these positions is highlighted in this example against Angers…
And this shot against Le Harve shows his knack for capitalising on scruffy chances…
He also has solid numbers when it comes to breaking up opposition attacks, sitting on the 73rd percentile for tackles in the attacking third of the pitch, underlining his ability to force high turnovers.
His relentlessness is clear in this example against Brest…
And in this example against Nice, he does not win the ball but forces the opposition to play sideways…
However, there are less impressive parts to Munetsi’s game too, particularly when it comes to passing.
He sits in the bottom one per cent of midfielders for passes attempted, passes completed, total passing distance and progressive passing distance, while his pass completion percentage is in the bottom two per cent. That might help explain why he sits in just the 42nd percentile for assists.
So Munetsi is very much a destroyer and useful goalscorer rather than a creator or playmaker, but at over 6ft 2in (188cm) tall and with the ability to cover lots of ground, he will give the Wolves midfield an extra physical edge that Pereira has been looking for.
“At times, he has been overshadowed by midfield partners,” Luke Entwistle, editor-in-chief of Get French Football News, tells The Athletic. “He’s always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Other players have maybe caught the eye more and Munetsi has always been the one who’s been very functional.
“He’s a bit all over the pitch. He’s a bit of a destroyer, a bit of the Manuel Ugarte type, but he does stuff that’s not really that pretty.
“He doesn’t put up huge numbers in any particular metric but he’s very functional. The passing stats aren’t good. He is very much about laying it off to somebody else and they will do the job.
(Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP via Getty Images)
“I think that there is maybe a technical deficit there. He’s not asked to pass the ball much but you also have to ask the question as to why he’s not being asked to pass.
“But out of possession, Munetsi is an absolutely great player. I’ve mentioned Ugarte once but I would say he’s of a similar profile: very athletic, a bit of a destroyer.”
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Djiga’s FBref scouting report is less reliable, given it is based only on his 720 minutes in this season’s Champions League, with data from the Serbian league limited. That compares to 2,839 minutes for Munetsi in the last year in Ligue 1.
But even bearing in mind the small sample size, the Champions League data places Djiga in the top 25 per cent of centre-backs for goalscoring and the top 18 per cent for assists, suggesting that he can be a threat in attacking areas.
His passing data is less impressive, placing him in the bottom 23 per cent for passes completed, although his pass-completion percentage puts him in the top 52 per cent.
Djiga tackles PSV’s Luuk de Jong in the Champions League (Andrej Isakovic/AFP via Getty Images)
In terms of defending, he sits in the bottom 39 per cent for tackles made and the bottom 21 per cent for tackles won, but he does sit in the top 23 per cent for interceptions. Djiga has earned a reputation in Serbia as a front-footed defender with the ability to start attacking moves.
This is clear in the example from the Champions League match against Young Boys last week…
He displayed his confidence in possession in the opening minute of the same game…
His positive style is also evident in this example, playing for Basel against Lausanne before his move to Serbia…
“His beginnings were not as impressive,” says Nebojsa Markovic, a Serbian football journalist, speaking to The Athletic. “It’s not like he came here amazing right away.
“The club actually moulded him because he came so young. His improvements were particularly obvious this season and he was really good in the two matches against Bodo/Glimt in the play-offs for the Champions League (in August), where he showed that this could be his season.
“He showed how he is a modern centre-back who can do many things. He has physicality and is the kind of player who would maybe fit stylistically into Ligue 1 in France. He’s very physical and he’s really good at aerial duels.
“In the Serbian League, things are much different because he’s playing in a team that dominates so much, so he’s more on the ball playing for passes and maybe finding players between the lines.
“The European matches were maybe what he will get used to in the Premier League because Crvena Zvezda were not really dominating their matches in the Champions League.
“But he’s more of a defender that tries to do things positively and that’s a really good thing because you can always dial it back a little bit if necessary, but he has the courage and he’s always trying to read the game.”
(Top photo: Marshall Munetsi, left, and Nasser Djiga, right; Getty Images)
