It’s been a while! I haven’t written in several months. I had some big projects planned, then some behind-the-scenes “real life” things happened, and here we are.
So what brought me back?
Birmingham Legion FC have signed yet another player who is considered to be a winger/forward. While Tabort Etaka Preston is a huge talent and would excite virtually every fanbase in the USL, Legion are one of the few teams that this does not excite.
Let’s look at the scouting report on Preston, and then let’s chat about it.
Preston – A Different Kind of Winger, but Does it Help?
Preston is a Right Footed, Right Winger who has pace and lots of technical ability. He has, while in more minutes, has completed 18 more dribbles than Tyler Pasher, but has over 145 less completed passes than Pasher. Even so, a lot of that comes down to him playing for a poor Las Vegas Lights squad.
But Pasher is not exactly the comparison we should be doing.
Above is Preston’s heatmap, thanks to Wyscout. As you can see, he’s a winger at heart. Those big white dots show the positions he has taken up the most in his career, which is primarily Right Wing or Right Midfield.
With the most crosses in the USL from the right side, with 103 total crosses and an average of 6.4 crosses per match, it’s clear that he was brought in to be a distributor, not a scorer like we have been led to believe. So, who should we be comparing him to? Well, the two players that have been our Right Wing this year: Prosper Kasim and Juan Agudelo.
Prosper is an obvious answer, but Juan Agudelo has recently been moved to that Right Wing area these last few matches, pushing Kasim to a Central Midfield role, but this is the most obvious comparison. So, let’s do it.
The first thing that should note is this: Prosper Kasim has 5 assists, Juan Agudelo has 4 assists, and Preston has 1 assist. Meanwhile, Preston has 5 goals, Juan Agudelo has 4 goals, and Prosper has 1 goals. So, Agudelo has 8 total goal contributions while Kasim and Preston are tied for 6. This is clearly a battle between Kasim and Preston, but I still want to include Agudelo.
In the top chart you can see some interesting stats. Preston has more shots per game than Agudelo and Kasim, but that also comes from a place of having almost zero offensive help in Vegas. Preston also has the most touches in the box, both Preston and Agudelo seemly dwarfing Kasim who rarely gets a chance.
That said, the proactive passing is what makes Kasim special, with 4.65 passes to the final third per match. We do see that Preston, however, attempts more crosses per match, with 6.31 crosses per match, completely dominating Agudelo who attempts 0.31 per match.
The biggest outlier is that Preston has 10.61 dribble attempts per match. 10.61. To put that into prospective even more Tyler Pasher only attempts 6.67 dribbles per match. Insanity.
All that shock and awe sorta disappears once you see the percentages, though. While Kasim has a much lower conversion rate, you also have to take into consideration that he really only getting 1-2 chances to even shoot per match, not exactly enough to get into a rhythm.
I mentioned Prosper’s passing, Juan is a vey accurate passer in his own right. Does he always release the ball at the right time? No, but he is a key cog in what makes the Legion machine run, with Kasim not far behind. Meanwhile, Preston is much farther behind.
How about those successful dribbles? Well, a 63.3% completion rate is incredible. Preston completing almost 6 dribbles a match is game changing, but I bet many are shocked at how well Kasim can dribble in his own right. He doesn’t have flashy moves you see from Pasher, Agudelo, formerly Marlon, Diba, or Preston, but he’s efficient. Who cares how Point A to B happens as long as it happens?
Here’s the kicker (get it?). Kasim is a lethal crosser of the ball. He doesn’t get the opportunity to cross often being a left footer who is often stuck on the right side, but when he does, it’s absolute magic. If you are Birmingham Legion and you were looking to sign a winger who can cross the ball effectively, he’s been on the team since 2019.
Lists of Wingers for Legion
A common place for Legion fans to talk about this roster construction, including myself, is that this team is built on players who are naturally wingers or have appeared for Legion as a winger.
I have in the past included Collin Smith, Jake Rufe, Gabriel Alves, Enzo Martinez, Tyler Freeman, and Mataeo Bunbury in that conversation. Despite the fact in the calendar year, all 6 have appeared as wingers for Legion, I will remove them from the conversation on the fact it’s not a primary role or they are being trained to do something else.
With those players left, there are now 6 players who are wingers who are under contract for Birmingham Legion FC:
- Tabort Etaka Preston
- Prosper Kasim
- Juan Agudelo
- Tyler Pasher
- Diba Nwegbo
- Grayson Dupont
All 6 of those players are under contract and are Legion players, not loanees. In all reality, you can only play with 2 true wingers at a time, so there are now 4 players who looking get playing time somewhere else or not at all. This is where the issue lies.
In Legion’s 4-2-3-1/4-3-3 that they have been running, you truly only have the space for two wingers at a time on the pitch, as you can see above. The red circles are to represent the wingers on the team. Now, our most recent line ups have looked something like this.
The blue shows a winger that is being used in a non-winger role, which is of course Prosper playing as a central midfielder. Which, as we discussed earlier, takes away that sublime crossing ability, but also allows him to have that proactive passing to the final third we had discussed earlier.
Even so, this still leaves three players on the bench: Pasher, Preston, and Dupont. Granted, Pasher is injured and who knows when Preston will be ready to play, but the point still stands. A winger is going to be on the bench when a much needed CB option could be there, much like a needed CB piece for the FC Tulsa match, now that Alex Crognale is suspended with a yellow card accumulation.
Let’s play a game, though. In this SAME LINE UP that I gave, let’s give everybody a blue dot that HAVE APPEARED FOR LEGION as a winger at some point.
That’s a lot of blue. Enzo has played out wide several times, in fact, that wide area when he sent in that cross for Neco Brett’s all-time bicycle goal. Jake Rufe and Collin Smith have both filled in on that wing, same with Alves on the opposite side. While me excluding those players at first was to initially to talk about a true comparison of primary wingers, this is still, frankly, not normal.
What About Defensive Help?
And this is truly where the crux of the issue falls. Let’s take the match up against FC Tulsa. While I am writing this portion of the article, the match has not started, so I could be totally wrong. My speculatory guess on what the line up would be is this:
You see Lopez or Rufe filling in for Crognale, and this is absolutely not a slight at either player. I’ve been saying for a while now that Jake Rufe fits, what I believe, a perfect mold for a wide center back in a 3 back formation. We have also seen Mikey Lopez appear at CB many times, and does a fantastic job.
That said, do you want a player who has played best as a CDM being your CB (Mikey)? Do you want a guy who has been rotating between full back and winger to be your CB (Jake)? Not in a massive 6 point match where it’s 7 vs 8 in a frankly weak Eastern Conference. Especially not when this team had real home playoff hopes just a few months ago, that are on the brink of falling through tonight.
This is also ignoring the disappearance of fan favorite Anderson Asiedu, which means young Matthew Corcoran will likely need to play all 90’+ before a Sunday match up against always physical Detroit City. That defensive depth is not being tested, it’s being thrown in the deep end we’re hoping they can fight to tread water without a break.
Final Comparisons
Why not just compare 5 of those wingers I said earlier? We already did the Prosper/Juan/Preston, but let’s get Nwegbo and Pasher added to the party. Does this signing at least mean one of those back up pieces are being shopped off or losing their spot entirely?
In all reality, Preston’s game feels like an aggressive, younger version of Pasher. While he is not exactly as refined as Pasher, he’s also 4 years younger with less injuries on the body (please knock on wood).
If you cannot tell, I am partial to the percentages. Not always, but they mostly tell the full story. You can stick Kaylor Hodges out on the right wing have him fire in 100 crosses per night, and it doesn’t mean that it’s “good.”
When looking at that chart, though, it really does make you appreciate just how good Diba Nwegbo has been. People have been discussing “poor recruitment” and “poor scouting”, but the quality of players are actually phenomenal. The question of “would you rather have a dribble and shooter or dribble and passer?” is where have landed here. We know Legion want pacy, technical wingers. Spoiler: so does every single club in the world. That said, defensive depth is needed, especially in the center back area of the pitch.
Conclusion
This is in no way to say the signing of Tabort Etaka Preston is a BAD signing. He’s a really good player that is going to grow and be special in this league. The issue is that we have holes, and we’re filling them with pieces of the puzzle that have already been placed. Maybe there is more on the way, there likely is. This team loves to pull off all their signings in the dark and bring in some absolute gamechangers, but time is quickly running out on this Year 5 season.
Hammering Down 
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