Emi Buendía: The Mesmeric Argentinian

Written by Jake Staniland (Twitter @BTL_Analysis)

Since signing for Norwich City in 2018, Buendía has become one of them players that you just have to watch. The Argentine Attacking Midfielder has put in a lot of mesmerising performances over these last few years. His form has had him tracked by a number of PL clubs, such as Arsenal who got the closest to signing him.

Here are his goals and assists stats in each of his seasons for Norwich so far:

Buendía can play on either wing as well as playing behind the ST. Right attacking midfield is his main position and he was tailor-made for it. Let’s take a look at his player profile and his heatmap:

Buendía’s playing style

Emi Buendía plays as an advanced playmaker. So this basically means that he will pop up in the pockets of space, in between the opposition midfield and defence. Although Buendía this season has been playing as a RW/RAM, you can see in his heatmap for this season he will free roam the attacking third, and look to receive the ball.

Using his intelligent movement and football IQ he will drift into areas that will occupy the opposition. He will attract the opposition players towards him, which will leave huge gaps for his teammates to exploit.

In this example you can see the blue dot which was Buendía’s initial position. He then began to drift infield, which attracts the opposition RB (the black circle) towards him. Now you can see Buendía decides to dart in behind the defence, causing the RB to be misdirected. Kenny McLean sees his run and plays a fantastic ball through to him…Buendía subsequently finishes it off with a first time volley. But the thing I love about this is that even if the ball didn’t get played to Buendía, his movement has occupied the RB and forced him to come narrow. Which has created huge amounts of space for his LB. You can’t see the Norwich LB in the picture but he is hugging the touchline. This is a move that Buendía does frequently on either wing.

Here is an example of that piece of movement but only on the opposite side. In this picture you can see the space that it creates for the Norwich RB. Once again Buendía sucks in the LB and his movement causes all sorts of problems for the full back.

Often you will also see Buendía drop deep to receive the ball off the 2 CB’s. This puts him in a role which is similar to a quarterback in American football.

In the example below you can see that he has multiple options to play the ball to. Dropping deep and taking the ball off the CB has allowed him to see the whole field and see the movement in front of him. This makes a change from the usual position he would take up in the pockets between the opposition backline and the midfield. (The violet dots would be his usual set position). Now Norwich have their main man on the ball, albeit on the halfway line, but this is exactly who you would want on the ball to unlock a defence.

He is a great passer and has the full repertoire of passes. Whether it’s inside and outside of the foot, pinging it to switch play, over the top through balls or threaded passes to feet or into space. Buendía excels at passing.

Here is a short clip which shows some of the best passes from Buendía in last seasons Premier League campaign: https://twitter.com/_MattAFC/status/1287007231620386817?s=19

In terms of xG and xA combined per 90, Buendía is far above everyone else in the Championship as the graph suggests. Even though that’s not really a surprise. His expected goals read at 0.29 per game, while his expected assists read at 0.26 per game.

Negative

The only criticism you can really say about him is his discipline/temperament. He is known to get wound up a bit and then retaliate with a bad tackle etc which will result in a yellow or red card.

Already this season he has seen 2 bookings in a game, (which of course results in a red card), on 2 occasions. Last season in the PL he saw red one time and picked up 6 yellows. This is really the only limitation he has to his game.

Conclusion

I think by now we are all aware of what the Argentinian magician can produce. Having set such high standards in each of his seasons in England, he is regarded as one of the best creative players in the English leagues.

Time after time he has shown us that he is levels above the Championship level. Last season he showed us he is more than capable of performing with similar effectiveness in the PL to how he does in the Championship.

He’s only 24 and he is pretty much the complete package that you would want from a player in his position. The consistency levels he has demonstrated, surely puts him on the verge of a move to a big club soon.