Crystal Palace were set to go in for former youth player and England international Nathaniel Clyne, but they have been put off by his long-term injury, reports suggest.
The Liverpool right-back had been at Crystal Palace as a youth player after joining the club in 1999 before leaving the club 13 years later for Southampton in 2012. He played 122 games for the Eagles and even picked up the player of the season award for the 2010-2011 season.
The Daily Mail reported that Palace were set to go in for Clyne this summer, but his cruciate injury sustained in a pre-season tour in the USA has made Palace lose interest. It is suggested within the report that the player will now miss the majority of the Premier League campaign.
The same report now suggests that Palace will go back in for Timothy Castagne – a player who Palace have been linked with all window – to try and solve their right-back woes. The Belgian was influential on Atalanta’s remarkable Serie A campaign last season, as they finished third to qualify for the Champions League. Even though it was previously reported that Castagne wanted to stay in Bergamo (Gazzetta dello Sport, via Football-Italia), he wants an improved deal to stay in Italy, but they are yet to meet his demands.
Considering Clyne’s injury, it hasn’t left Palace with much choice but to pursue another right-back.
After the sale of Aaron Wan-Bissaka, the club only have two established right-backs in Joel Ward and Martin Kelly.
In Clyne, Palace could have had a player who would have filled the defensive void left by Aaron Wan-Bissaka, but similarly to the fellow Palace full-back, his offensive stats don’t match his ability in defence.
Last season Wan-Bissaka outshone Clyne defensively, who only played fourteen games on loan at Bournemouth after falling out of favour to Trent Alexander-Arnold at Liverpool. He achieved more tackles per match (3.7 to 2.4), more interceptions per game (2.4 to 1.1), more clearances per game (3.7 to 1.9), allowed less dribbles past him per game (0.3 to 0.9) and averaged more blocks per game (0.5 to 0.2), with all stats coming from WhoScored.
On the ball, he has fairly similar stats to Wan-Bissaka, just with considerably fewer dribbles. He has an average of 32.8 passes, which is lower than Wan-Bissaka’s 33.3, a higher pass completion rate of 75.2 to 73, the same amount of crosses at 0.3 to 0.3 and slightly more long balls at 1.1 to 1, per stats from WhoScored.
In fairness to Clyne, a back injury kept him out for 44 games (Transfermarkt), which makes this injury all the tougher for the Londoner. He hasn’t been able to get into the England team since the injury in 2017 and has only started seven times over the past two seasons for Liverpool, summarising a big fall for the player.
Instead, Palace are reportedly going after Castagne, who offers much more of an attacking threat than either of these two, according to his stats. Castagne scored four goals to Wan-Bissaka’s none but did register one less assist than him with two. However, per game Castagne had a higher amount of shots (0.7 to 0.3), more key passes (1 to 0.4), was dispossessed less (1 to 1.1), had more crosses (0.4 to 0.3) and had a much better passing percentage rate (83.7 to 73) than the former Palace right-back (WhoScored).
As cynical as it sounds, Clyne’s injury could be a blessing in disguise for Palace, as a return for Clyne wasn’t necessarily the right option.
Replacing Wan-Bissaka is always going to be a difficult ask for Palace and therefore a linear replacement might not be the best option.
Palace should look to add a player with more attacking ability to their ranks than Wan-Bissaka to try and increase the threat on the right-hand side. Last season Patrick van Aanholt and Wilfried Zaha contributed a lot more goals and assists combining on the left in comparison to Wan-Bissaka and Andros Townsend on the right (13 goals and seven assists for Zaha and van Aanholt, six goals and seven assists for Townsend and Wan-Bissaka).
Therefore, instead of Palace replacing what they have with something similar, they can adapt to have more threat from right-back to find another source of goals. It may detract from their defensive record, but it may also increase the number of goals they score.
Crystal Palace fans, would Clyne have been an adequate Wan-Bissaka replacement? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below!
