27/69 duels completed, 37.5% dribble success: Manchester United man is struggling to make impact at Birmingham City | OneFootball

Having brought both Tahith Chong and Teden Mengi in on loan from Manchester United last season, Birmingham City continued their good relations with the Red Devils by bringing in Hannibal Mejbri this summer.

Along with Chong, who returned on a permanent basis, Hannibal is continuing his development at St. Andrew’s, with United seeing how well their other young talents have done in the care of the Blues.

The 19-year-old is thought of as one of the top young talents at Old Trafford since his arrival from AS Monaco in 2019, paying an initial €5 million for Hannibal, who was 16 years of age at the time, and in 2021 he won the Reserves Player of the Year.

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Having not been out on loan so far in his career, Mejbri’s first move away from United has been to the Championship with Birmingham after featuring twice for the club’s first-team in the Premier League last season, but it’s been a relatively slow start to life in the EFL.

Hannibal has made six Championship appearances, with his debut coming in late August against Norwich City, but he is still yet to make a start under John Eustace, who has preferred a midfield trio of Krystian Bielik, Chong and Juninho Bacuna.

The Tunisia international’s longest time on the pitch was in the most recent fixture against Middlesbrough, where he came on at half-time for Bacuna.

He failed to impress though against Boro in the 1-0 defeat, giving the ball away six times and losing 16 of his 24 attempted duels and also committed three fouls, looking pretty rash in the process.

Mejbri didn’t do too much to impress Eustace in an attempt to secure future starts, and looking at his overall numbers this season, it’s clear to see he needs to improve when he is given his chance.

Per Wyscout, in his six appearances so far, Mejbri has completed 37 out of his 47 attempted passes, which is a 78.7 per cent success rate and completed 12 recoveries of the ball – six of those in the opposition half.

There are some negatives though, as he has only completed three of his eight attempted dribbles in his games, whilst only 27 of his 69 attempted duels have been successful – a success rate of 37.5 per cent, as well as only four of 13 loose ball duels that have gone in his favour.

Things have to get better for Mejbri, and perhaps if he’s given a run at starting matches he will become more comfortable – for a player of his reputation though there must be improvement.