Raphinha vs Nico Williams: Barcelona star dominating Blaugrana transfer target | OneFootball

A head-turning set of statistics, highlighting the gap in productivity between Barcelona star Raphinha and Athletic Club counterpart Nico Williams over the early weeks of the season has come to the fore online.

This, of course, comes after wide-man Nico was hotly tipped to take his talents to the Camp Nou throughout the summer.

In the end, the efforts of Deco and co. to strike a deal for the 22-year-old came up short, after Nico came to the decision to stay put in Blibao for at least one more season.

Safe to say, however, that to this point in the La Liga campaign, Barcelona have not exactly struggled in the absence of the Spanish international…

In fact, quite the opposite.

Hansi Flick’s troops currently find themselves sitting pretty atop the Spanish top-flight table, with a perfect record of four wins from four.

And much of this success has come owing to the exploits of the player whom Williams was actually tipped to replace in the Blaugrana’s XI.

Raphinha continued what has proven a remarkable opening to the term from an individual standpoint on Saturday, by way of a Man of the Match performance in Barca’s 7-0 drubbing of Real Valladolid.

And as much, as alluded to above, has since given rise to an eye-opening set of statistics.

As revealed by StatMuse, across the first four weeks of the term, Raphinha has managed to outperform Nico by the following:

3 goals, 2 assists, 4 shots on target, 5 big chances created, 9 accurate crosses, and 10 chances created.

Conor Laird | GSFN