Adam King — My Failed Defense of a Struggling Midfielder
I’ll preface this with the obvious; the data used doesn’t include Tuesday’s Scottish Cup tie against Stirling. Also, Adam King has a limited amount of game time this season, so the stats I’m using will be per90 to try and even out the field.
I spent this afternoon trying to find a way to justify my one-man mission to defend Adam King at Raith Rovers.
As I poured through the data from his limited playing time, I immediately checked to see how his passing metrics stacked up. I felt that was reasonable, considering Raith’s reputation this season for getting the ball down and playing through the midfield, and I was surprised to have found a player perhaps unworthy of the criticism for ‘not being involved’.
In terms of moving the ball around, King doesn’t stand out negatively within the midfield group that love to pass it about so much. However, questions need to be asked of his poor completion rates when playing the easy ball backwards. I was also pretty surprised by how little, comparatively, the play went through the combative Ross Mathews.
Despite feeling a bit more assured in my mission to defend King at this point, passing the ball is not all a player makes. Especially within the highly physical and quickly paced Scottish Championship, where it’s as much key to go about the match fighting for second balls, or getting up and involved in the inevitable battle of heider tennis in the midfield. This is where the criticism of King gains more validation.
For a team that likes to play on the front foot, in possession, he contributes very little in terms of winning the ball back and recycling possession in offensive areas. I understand that this might not be his role in the team, as it’s certainly not Brad Spencers, but when it comes to getting the heid on it and dealing with opposition clearances, Spencer helps cover the back four, while King does not. I think this is why we see a lot of fan animosity towards King; it’s his lack of threat in the final third.
Tuesday aside, where he did have several chances to score against League Two Stirling in the cup, King barely shows up in the business end of the park. This data includes the 22-minutes he played against Dundee in a Mezzala role helping to overload on the right wing, where he duelled for the ball only once, and lost out. The midfield position where King plays is a hotly competed one within the team. In a system that plays only three midfielders, he doesn’t come out well in terms of gaining additional minutes, in my eyes anyway. I only used these five players as a comparison but could have easily included Kai Kennedy, Jamie Gullan, and Lewis Vaughn, as all three have proven themselves handy sitting in the advanced midfield role behind a solo striker. With this, the case for King becomes worse.
So is King a player who sometimes receives the ball after a teammate has recovered it, and who can find the killer pass that gets us in good positions? Is this the reason that I jumped in to defend him?
He’s passed the ball into the penalty area once. Once in all league matches he’s played, none of the passes he’s played have been a penetrative pass that has tried to break the opposition lines, nor has any of the passes he played resulted in goal scoring opportunities. All of which is backed up but having an xA of 0.
There is an argument that the Raith midfield do shun responsibility when it comes to creating chances though, almost always going wide to the wingers or overlapping fullbacks, but that is an argument for another time.
I must admit I was surprised by the signing of King, but I was excited to see what he could do. We seem to have signed a player who plays deep, but doesn’t duel for the ball, and struggles to retain possession, as in the 43 times he’s received the pass he’s lost it 15 of those times. As well as a player who loses it most when playing easy backwards passes. In passing it forward, despite his comparatively higher completion rate, he’ll usually play it to players that are tightly marked and easily closed down, or into non-dangerous areas. So despite his average passing numbers within the 5 Raith midfielders, none of the passes he plays really amount to much. I think it’s unfair to single out King and say he doesn’t get involved, he does, it would perhaps be more true to say that when he does, it is so often forgettable.
Not all is lost for King, and I hope he sticks at it. There have been some lovely moments where his passing ability has shone, especially when he’s cut through a team’s midfield press with a quality ball through to a more advanced player, he just needs to be smarter with these passes, perhaps trying the ball to coincide with a run in behind the defence as opposed to the solo striker, with his back to goal, marked tightly by a centre half. I also think he needs to focus on establishing a role within the Raith midfield, instead of being on the periphery of a match, leaving the support unsure of what he’s meant to be doing on the park.
