There has been a great deal of interest in West Ham’s young central midfielder Declan Rice.
Rice was named the Young Player of the Season at the London Stadium and as a 20-year-old homegrown talent has understandably attracted a great deal of attention from some big clubs.
As a result, West Ham have been linked with some replacement midfielders – none more so than Milan’s Franck Kessie.
Kessie, 22, has been ever-present in a Milan side who finished fifth in Serie A last season – missing out on a Champions League place by a single point to Atalanta and bitter rivals Inter.
The Ivory Coast international made 42 appearances for the Italian club last season, contributing seven goals and three assists.
Rice, who appeared 38 times for the Hammers last season, scored twice and assisted once.
However, neither Kessie or Rice are the sort of creative midfielders that are going to be regularly involved at the top end of the pitch.
The kind of statistics that are more relevant when trying to compare the two are those which look at attributes such as passing and tackling.
According to Who Scored, Kessie averaged 48.4 passes per game for Milan last season with a completion rate of 87.3%.
For a defensively minded midfielder Kessie’s average number of tackles per game is quite low at just 1.2, as is his number of interceptions at 0.8.
England international Rice’s statistics show him to be a more industrious midfielder as he averaged 2.9 tackles and 1.6 interceptions per game during his 2018/19 campaign.
Rice’s number of passes per game is a little lower than Kessie’s at 44.9, while his pass completion is also a little off of Kessie at 86.7%.
These statistics accurately represent the slightly different roles that Kessie and Rice play in their respective teams.
Although they do play in what is ostensibly a deep-lying midfield role, Kessie has a more cultured range of passing while Rice is a dogged, determined midfielder who marshals the defence and is extremely proficient at recovering the ball quickly and giving it to the more dynamic attacking players.
Kessie averages 1.5 shots per game compared to Rice’s 0.6 which just reinforces the point that Kessie is more of a box-to-box player than Rice and if West Ham were to sign him they would not necessarily be getting a player that slots into the same role.
But the fact that, according to the Daily Express, Kessie is rumoured to be £30million – a lot less than you would expect Rice to go for – it would be a coup for West Ham to scoop him up as a replacement, even if they are getting a slightly different player.
