Scouted — Olamide Shodipo
A product of QPR’s youth system that can boast the likes of Eberechi Eze having come from their ranks, Shodipo has had a slightly more difficult route to proper. Born in Dublin, Shodipo is an Ireland U21 international, but has found it hard to establish himself in English league football. He made his first appearances for QPR in 2016 but has since found it difficult to break into the first team at Loftus Road.
Short loan spells at Port Vale for half of the 2016/17 season and Colchester for half of the 2017/18 season ensued, but neither were successful for Shodipo. Karl Robinson’s Oxford snapped him up in October of 2020, brought in to primarily play on the left wing of a 4–3–3 system, where he can cut in with his favoured right foot and be a direct threat to goal.
He scored on his Oxford debut in a 3–2 win over MK Dons on the 20th of October, but he has really hit form recently. Since the 29th of December Shodipo has scored 5 goals in 7 games in the league, as well as 1 in an EFL trophy game against Wimbledon. His pace, trickery and direct running has caused chaos in L1 defences, and he seems to be playing in a very confident manner.
Shodipo has good spatial awareness, always looking to receive the ball in the wider areas of the pitch, with his body faced towards the opposing full-back. This enables him to 1v1 the defender, where he can use his pace to either round the defender and look for a cutback, or his more customary tactic of using a good body feint to cut inside onto his right foot. This is where he scores many of his goals from.
His finishing of his right foot is another quality asset. In the below video Shodipo scored 2 goals vs. Burton Albion, the first of which was a magnificent curling effort from the edge of the box into the top right corner.
For me that first goal signified Shodipo’s class. He is always looking to drift into the centre, eager to get on the ball and influence play in the final third, and has the quality to put the ball in the back of the net.
In term of areas to improve on, from the visualisation I made at the top of this piece it’s clear that Shodipo hasn’t been the most creative of plays this season. He doesn’t really look to use his left foot at all, and perhaps he could become more of a creative threat if he started using his left foot to take the ball to the byline and cut back, for example. He seems restricted to only cutting inside to use his right foot, rather than offer a threat running on the outside of a full back. I think this lack of a crossing threat is slightly negated by having Josh Ruffels at left back who is one of the outstanding crossers in the league, but a team who plays Shodipo on the left and relies on him to deliver into the box may notice this weakness more.
Overall Shodipo has been good in L1 this season. QPR are currently employing a 3–5–2 or similar system, and I struggle to see where Shodipo could fit into this in all honesty. I’m not aware of his contract situation so perhaps he may be on the market this summer, but if he continues with his L1 form he could be a decent pickup for bottom half championship teams. I think last 30 minutes of the bench especially, he can be a real threat.