FOUR Reasons Why City And Other Premier League Clubs Should Avoid Signing Antoine Griezmann This Summer

With reports in France indicating that Barcelona have now offered Antoine Griezmann to Manchester City and Spurs, in addition to Manchester United and Chelsea, we thought it is the right time to assess whether the forward would be a good signing for a Premier League club.

Some fans may feel that the 30-year-old is worth taking a chance on, based purely on his past track record, but there are a number of factors as to why City and other teams should steer clear of him.

Griezmann has had an excellent career, both at club and international level, but he is at an age now where there is an inevitable natural decline in his game.

Press the next page as we give four reasons why English teams should look to avoid signing the French World Cup winner.

1) His ability to convert shooting opportunities has nosedived

Non-penalty goals – xG gives us a good bearing as to how well a player is performing in front of goal. If their number of non-penalty goals is below their xG number, they will get a negative score, and if their number of goals is above their xG, it will give us a positive number.

Over the last four years, Griezmann has gone from +5.9, +2.3 and +1.3 to -0.8 last season. It means his ability to convert goal-scoring chances has progressively got worse.

2) Griezmann is becoming less and less involved in creating goals

Goal Creating Actions (GCA) are the number of passes, dribbles, shots, fouls drawn and defensive plays that directly lead to a shot on goal from a teammate. Over the past few seasons, Griezmann has been gradually getting poorer in this metric.

In the 2017/18 campaign, the Frenchman averaged 0.68 Goal Creating Actions per 90 minutes, and that has declined to a point where he averaged only 0.29 per 90 last season.

3) He rarely dribbles past players these days

In his early days with Real Sociedad, Griezmann was more widely regarded as a winger than a forward, and he used his pace regularly to get past his opponents.

However, as he has got older, the Frenchman has found it harder to do this, culminating in him dribbling past a player on just 30 occasions in each of the last two seasons at Barca. In his last campaign with Atletico, he did it 47 times.

4) Griezmann is far less interested in pressing

With pressing stats, you have to be slightly more careful about making sweeping judgements, due to the fact that the manager’s style of play can influence a player’s numbers.

However, Griezmann’s pressures per 90 minutes over the last four years have got worse and worse. In his last season with Atletico, he pressured an opponent on 919 different occasions. In the 2020/21 campaign for Barca, he pressed the ball only 501 times.

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