Physical beast showing his technical side – leads team in attacking and defensive stats | OneFootball

Back in February, things were looking pretty bleak for Andrey Santos. He had wasted 6 months on loan at Nottingham Forest, where he collected just a handful of minutes at a crucial moment in his career as he looked to settle in to European football.

To make things worse, he had just been switched to Strasbourg, only to find himself rooted to the bench once again. We were just about ready to write this season for the youngster, but since then it’s been a steady rise, and he’s enjoyed a really strong run since then.

He’s playing every week for Patrick Vieira’s team now, and clearly that early blip was just an adaptation period. Their results have improved markedly since his introduction, and he’s doing really well on an individual level too. His confidence is growing and it shows.

Chelsea Loan Army on Twitter noted a hugely impressive run of stats from their last two games, where the Alsatians played Lille and Nice, two of the top 5 sides in Ligue 1. In both games, Santos led his team in progressive passes, passes into the final third, tackles, ball recoveries and expected assists.

End to end and box to box

That shows he’s really got both sides of his game working. While his physicality means he will be seen more as a destroyer, he’s got great ability in all areas.

This kind of forward passing as evidenced in the stats shows he might actually be further ahead in developing that side of his game than we thought. Clearly Vieira is coaching him well. Given Strasbourg are our sister club, it will be very interesting to see what our plans are for Santos next season. Leaving him there for a full season seems a no brainer – but there’s just no telling with these sporting directors.