Finding an attacking midfielder in the National League

The National League, or the 5th tier of English football, has been a common talent hunting ground for football league clubs. Non-league football in general has seen the rise of premier league stars such as Jamie Vardy, Michail Antonio and Tyrone Mings in recent years. It’s an area filled with players both young and old with genuine desire to make it into the ‘big leagues.’ Coupled with this, most players are available on the cheap, so if a talent is found, they can present excellent resale value. This value is often found with players a lot further down the pyramid. For example Mohamed Eisa was picked up by Cheltenham Town in league 2 for free from Greenwich Borough F.C in the 7th tier. A year later Eisa was sold to Bristol City for around £1 million. This type of sale is reasonably common, and recent similar moves include the likes of Max Watters to Cardiff City from Crawley. These deals represent huge resale potential that can be vital for the poorer clubs in the EFL.

On the topic of Cheltenham Town, who are the club I support, an issue that has in my opinion been the only real weakness of a great season has been the lack of a good quality creative midfielder. With the loss of Ryan Broom in the summer of 2020, who contributed 27% of Cheltenham’s goals last year, a big hole was left that hasn’t been filled to a top L2 quality. Cheltenham are a team with one of the lowest wage bills in L2, so naturally a place to look for a more permanent signing is non-league. This gave me the idea to have a look at some plays that I think could potentially be playing for an EFL club in the not to distant future.

In this article I will attempt to find an attack-minded midfielder that I think can make the step up to a high L2/low L1 level. Unfortunately there is a lack of WyScout data for leagues lower down the pyramid, so I will only be searching for players in the 5th tier. This is also the last time I will mention Cheltenham as I don’t want to limit the search to find a player that will only suit Chelt’s particular system. Criteria will be fairly simple:

• 600+ minutes played in the National League 20/21
• Has played ‘AMF’ as per WyScouts database
• Aged under 28

The data

I’ve decided to make 3 simple visualisations to help narrow down the search. All data is provided by WyScout.

First off a look at assists and goals. I have chosen xA over assists per90 as I feel it paints a better picture of a players creative output than regular assists. Often in the National League there is a wide range of quality in front of goal, and some creative players can be severely under represented if you purely look at assists — e.g Ruben Rodrigues has over 0.2 xA per 90 yet no league assists this year.

Second graph is a change in focus towards creative passing. Most players who appear high in the xA axis in the previous graph will show good numbers in the graph below, as passes to penalty area and key passes are often shot creating actions. A note that the player not labelled below Lemonheigh-Evans is Ruben Rodrigues.

Finally a look towards dribbling stats. I find a direct running style in L2 especially can prove very dangerous. Many defenders lack the pace and/or mobility to deal with a direct and tricky runner, and often this results in a foul in a dangerous position or an opportunity to assist or shoot. This is especially evident this season in players such as Dylan Bahamboula of Oldham Athletic, who has proved to be extremely dangerous with his great technical dribbling skills. Again the unlabelled player in the graph just above Neufville is Ruben Rodrigues.

Before I video scout to find the player that is my favorite, I’ll narrow down the search to 5 players that stand out to me from the 3 visualisations I have made. I have excluded players that are on loan from football league clubs.

• Connor Lemonheigh-Evans (24, Torquay United)
• Craig Tanner (27, Aldershot Town)
• Ruben Rodrigues (24, Notts County)
• Josh Coley (22, Maidenhead United)
• Jack Earing (22, Halifax Town)

My pick: Rúben Rodrigues (24, Notts County)

All 5 players had their merits, and considering many of them were young it would not surprise me if many of them are playing EFL football in the future. I decided to pick Rodrigues because his technical ability really shone out for the level he was playing. Signed on a free after an outstanding season at Keuken Kampioen Divisie side Den Bosch (27 app, 12 G, 10 A), he is easily one of the top technicians in the league, although his contributions for Notts County this season aren’t the best, with 3 goals and 0 assists in 19 games. I would also like to say that my point about non league being good for bargains is not the case in Notts County! They are one of if not the richest clubs in non league, and Rodrigues having a market value of £450,000 on transfermarkt signifies the kind of players they can attract whilst looking for promotion to the EFL. I’m not sure on his contract situation but I would assume Notts would command a high fee for Rodrigues.

After watching Rodrigues for a few games, I compiled a scout report. Inspiration for this is from @GriffinFtbl and my years spent player Football Manager! Remember it’s relative to the league, so dark green= outstanding for a national league standard.

Rodrigues ticks all the boxes in terms of being an attacking midfield force in L2/1. His standout area is of course his technical ability, particularly his dribbling. Despite his 6'1" frame, Rodrigues is reasonably agile on the ball and displays outstanding balance. His close control and ability to turn defenders in tight spaces is class. His build is quite stocky for his position, and that enables him to use his good strength to hold off defenders whilst carrying the ball. Notts County set up in a 4–4–2 which has no traditional ‘AM’ role, but often Rodrigues plays centre-forward, where he often drops deep into the 10 role in a 4–2–3–1. Here he looks to spread the ball wide or take the ball wide himself, where he can cross into the box. His crossing ability is good, as is his passing. He tries to keep his passing on the ground as much as possible, and rarely played a wayward pass in the 3 full games I watched. I would perhaps like him to play more risky forward passes, but Notts County often lack a mobile striker looking for runs in behind so this is understandable.

A lot of his goals for Den Bosch last season came from headed goals, which is another asset of his height. He was often seen arriving late into the box to head the ball in from a cross. This late movement into the box is a common trait of his — after passing wide for a player to cross, he often does his best to get into the box and provide a target to aim at. When he doesn’t move into the box, he camps around the 18-yard line looking for second balls to rifle at goal. He scored a fantastic long shot not long ago vs Dagenham and Redbridge, which I think showcases his shooting ability from range. He is capable of doing this on either foot and scored many of his goals for Den Bosch of his weaker left, which is very much a positive.

Rodrigues’ shortcomings are mainly physical. He has only completed 3 90’s for Notts County this season, and this is down to his stamina. Towards the second half he can often look ragged and tired, and his work rate decreases quite a lot. When he has energy at the start of the game, his pressing is quite good, but it often tails off, almost always by the 60th/70th minute where he often gets subbed. Both his acceleration and top sprint speed are average, which really lets him down, as although he is a class dribbler and can often get past his man, he doesn’t have the pace to exploit this and defenders can often recover.

At the time of writing Notts County are 7th in the National League with 3 games in hand on most teams, and they are a team who are expected to gain promotion to League 2. I think it is likely that we will see Rodrigues playing league football next season (or a move abroad) for Notts County or for another team. I believe he has the ability to do so, and being only 24 means he can work on ironing out some flaws and improving even more as a footballer. I look forward to see what happens in the National League this season and in the subsequent summer window, where other names I have mentioned in this article may or may not pop up!