Dom Jeffries, as a midfielder, predominately played on the left for Gillingham.

He operated pretty much anywhere across the middle of the park, but rarely elsewhere. However, in his first few minutes at Sincil Bank this week, he played right wing-back. It made Chris happy – he called it a while ago, but what is it in Jeffries’ stats that makes him a potential right wing-back?

I thought I’d pull his stats from last season and stack them up against two Imps: Lasse Sorensen and Ethan Hamilton, to spot any patterns that might suggest he could play on the right. I’ve picked Ethan Hamilton as he is the type of midfielder that eclipses Jeffries in terms of their ability. Of course, the fact he did on saturday is argument enough!

However, we saw Lasse swap from central midfield to right wing-back, is Dom Jeffries about to do the same?

All stats courtesy of Wyscout

Last season

For clarity, I thought it was important to compare heatmaps for the three players. Obviously, last season, Lasse was very much an attacking full back, as the graphic below shows.

Ethan, playing a similar role to the one we think Dom Jeffries will play, saw a lot of the ball in the middle, but was more right-sided. As I’ve researched this article, I’m wondering if he might also be a suitable right wing-back, despite being left footed.

Finally, completing our trio, is Dom Jeffries, who played on the left for Gillingham last season. What’s interesting here is while we’ve had him packaged as a box-to-box midfielder, his heat map has got evidence of a high, wide player.

That makes the first question one around their defensive duties.

A case for the defence

I’ve looked at a handful of key stats to back up any argument that might suggest Jeffries can play right wing-back. The first is a staple of any role within a defence, defensive duels. It’s probably fair to say that Lasse was often questioned in terms of his defensive work – he could definitely get forward, but defensively, he wasn’t always as strong, certainly not when he played right back.

Last season, in terms of players in the same position, Lasse was 92nd for defensive duels, with 5.71 at a 63.5% success rate. In fairness, the success rate is probably more important than the number, and 63.5% is above average.

What we’d need to see from Dom Jeffries is numbers in the same ball park. Now, bear in mind these figures will come from like-for-like positions, so Jeffries will be compared with midfielders, rather than wing-backs. He’s 82 in League Two, but don’t place too much emphasis on that –  a player could come on for five minutes, make three defensive duels and not play again, and still be higher on the table.

I’m interested in that percentage more so than the number. 6.23 is decent, but the win rate of 65.89% is comparable to Lasse, pointing at Jeffries being able to hold his own in terms of tackles and duels.

For comparison, but perhaps not as pertinent to the discussion, is Ethan Hamilton’s defensive duels. He ranked 39 in the division, but had more per 90 (being central, you’d expect that) and another decent success rate.

Pressing

Pressing, a posh word for ‘get into them’, is something we need to be able to do. We pressed high and from the front last season, but the wing-backs play a big role in that as well. Pressing, for those who don’t know, is when a player goes to an opponent to win the ball. For instance, if we ‘press high’ it likely means Ben House is heading for a defender. The ‘press’ breaks down if the other players don’t go to other opponents. If Ben goes to a defender, and the defender pops it to the left, then our right wing-back may be the player expected to have moved up, so the receiving player doesn’t have time on the ball.

Counterpressing recoveries are where a a press recovers the ball quickly from opponents, within five seconds. Lasse did that 3.17 times per game from right wing-back, 90th in the division, but again those numbers can be skewed by players who played very few matches.

Bearing in mind that Dom Jeffries played a different role, his numbers were higher than Lasse, which again demonstrates an ability to perform the same tasks. He won the ball back on a counterpress more than our right wing-back from last season, and to prove those numbers stack up, Ethan Hamilton was around a similar number. It is important to remember that we’re comparing League Two and League One, but Jeffries shouldn’t find the step-up in quality a major issue given his own attributes.

Ball carrying

Finally, I wanted to look at ball carrying. A good wing-back will make progressive runs, carrying the ball upfield, and they’ll be able to retain possession when on the ball. They’re not quite wingers, but their dribbling stats are hugely important. If we’re happy that Jeffries can defend and can contest duels at a comparable level to Lasse, are we happy he can move us up the field in the same manner?

Lasse ranked a little higher for this than the defensive stuff, which I don’t think would surprise anyone. He attempted 2.21 dribbles per game, with a 48.04% success rate. In terms of progressive runs, which is carrying the ball towards goal (distance depends on the starting point) Lasse was 44th, with 1.69 per 90 minutes, averaging 63.08 metres. Interesting, by the way, that Dylan Duffy ranked close to Lasse.

As Dom played in a wide position, we’d hope to see numbers close to those if we wanted hard evidence that he could play right wing-back.

The numbers are slightly lower, but when you consider he played further up the field, the opportunity for a progressive run is diminished—Lasse may have had 70 metres to run into, but Dom wouldn’t have had so much green to attack, which will account for the 20-metre (ish) difference.

However, his dribble success is good at 55%, suggesting that while the current numbers are not quite Lasse levels, there’s a skillset there for him to utilise on the right flank.

For comparison, Ethan Hamilton’s numbers were also slightly lower than Lasses’s, proving that the difference in position can account for the variation in numbers.

Conclusion

I could have gone deeper at crosses and shots, but eventually, it would get too stat-heavy. However, Dom produced 1.32 crosses per game for the Gills last season, with a 40.6% success rate. Lasse did perform more, 3.27 per game, but at a 36.1% success rate, which is actually still decent; the best in the division was someone called Tom Hamer, with 59.52%……

There is certainly evidence that Dom Jeffries is going to be an option at right wing-back, even if Tendayi is the obvious first choice. For the Jack Mulhall and Andy Pearsons of the world, I suppose I could have saved them time by just writing, ‘because he came on there against Arsenal and put it a great cross for Freddie Draper to nearly score,’ but where would the fun have been in that?