Juninho Bacuna: What type of player are Rangers signing?

That’s how former Huddersfield manager Danny Cowley summed up the potential of Rangers-linked Juninho Bacuna in 2020.

The Ibrox side has been heavily linked with the 24-year-old former Groningen midfielder in the last 24 hours – after Steven Gerrard confirmed in his pre-Alashkert press conference that he hoped the arrival of a midfielder was imminent.

He said: “It is an area where last year, come the end of the season with the amount of games and volume of games, we felt we were a little bit short at times. We did ask Glen Kamara, Steven Davis and Joe Aribo to go above and beyond and they did that.

“But I don’t want to be as vulnerable as I was towards the back end of the season. I do want to have options, I do like to have two top players in each position and if we can get this signing that we’re looking at over the line in the coming days then I'll be really satisfied with the engine room.”

Does Bacuna fit that profile?

With a year left on his contract at Huddersfield and likely not opposed to leaving the club – the deal appears realistic.

He began his career with Groningen and played youth football for the Netherlands – up until the Under-21s side - before pledging international allegiance to Curacao.

Huddersfield signed Bacuna upon promotion to the Premiership in 2018. Then a promising 20-year-old – he had made 82 top-flight appearances in the Ederevise by the time he moved to England.

"He's an exciting midfielder that offers all the aggression of a defensive midfielder and the technical skills and mobility of an offensive midfielder," was the judgement of then-manager David Wagner.

"We will give him all the support he needs to make the best out of the potential he definitely has."

Perspective

A player who has only fleetingly impressed at a team languishing at the bottom of the Championship these past two seasons perhaps won’t excite supporters in the first instance - Bacuna's career in England hasn't quite reached expectation.

However – football isn’t always quite as black and white as we want it to be.

As revealed in our long-read exclusive on Rangers’ "deal of the century" to sign Glen Kamara, a source at Dundee revealed Jim McIntyre just “didn’t rate” the Finnish midfielder – instead favouring Martin Woods who had recently been released by Partick Thistle.

Three years on Kamara is arguably Rangers most prized asset and has recently shone for his country at the European Championships.

More than a few eyebrows were raised when Leon Balogun was signed following relegation with Wigan. His profile isn’t at its highest just now following the club’s Champions League exit, but he has been an excellent addition all things considered given his contribution last year.

READ MORE: Rangers star Glen Kamara is worth £20m and not a penny less - Derek Clark

While the signing of Scott Wright excited supporters, he was a player who had underperformed to that point in his career given his capabilities and potential.

He explained the impact of environment change to RangersTV: “The detail of the tactics and the approach for each game are completely unique. It is different going into every single game.

"I feel as if I am constantly learning, whether it is off the pitch from management or other players. When you are on the training pitch as well you are learning a lot from the management.”

The point is – a player’s football club is not always an equilibrium of their ability. Managers can play them out of position, teams can be unbalanced, opinions can be wrong. Players sometimes need a particular platform to fulfil their potential. Perhaps Bacuna falls into that bracket.

It’s important to consider the environment within which he has played his football these past few years. He arrived as a 20-year-old to a club who had just punched well above their weight to reach the riches of the Premier League in 2018 but have struggled ever since a dramatic survival story that inaugural season.

After relegation to the Championship in 2019, they finished 18th and 20th the following two years – the quite remarkable progress in reaching England’s top division was not capitalised upon and Huddersfield have had to build from the ground up once more.

In a wide-ranging feature on the state of the club in the Athletic, a supporter summates the journey like this: “It’s like the Premier League never happened. What’s the legacy? Absolutely nothing.”

Stats

In comparison to the rest of the Championship's midfielders last season, Bacuna didn’t set the heather on fire. He was playing for a team however who had the worst defence, conceding on average 1.5 goals per game.

He scored five goals from an xG of 4.75 and made two assists from an xA of 2.5. 

Across the board, Bacuna doesn't jump out statistically as a player who is outperforming his club. 

Stats such as passes into the opposition penalty area must be tempered by the fact that he was playing for a team that only won 12 of 46 games. 

Bacuna ranks well in regards to offensive duels, progressive runs and deep completions - but less so when viewing his progressive passes and passes into the penalty area.

Offensive

Shots

Moving onto his shot map, Bacuna takes a fair amount of low probability strikes. As we will come onto, he also has scored some impressive goals - this is an area that will need refinement if he does move to Ibrox.

His xG bucket demonstrates how many of his efforts have an xG rating of less than one in 10 before struck.

Defensive 

Bacuna ranks relatively lowly in both recoveries and counterpressing recoveries. Given he played in so many positions last season, it's hard to contextualise his recovery stats. 

Style of play

Bacuna is a midfielder who can progress the ball from deep and is defensively sound enough to occasionally line up at right-back, but seems more natural going forward.

Upon watching him, it's clear he needs structure around him. Whether he has the discipline to fulfil the defensive responsibilities bestowed upon a centre-midfielder at Rangers in high-level games remains to be seen, but given that position requires such a variety of skills, he could excel there.

Throughout his spell at Huddersfield, he has played everywhere from right-back to attacking midfield. This flexibility suggests he is a player who would suit the positional play that Rangers often utilise domestically and who could be coached to a system.

Joe Aribo’s best position is as a more advanced left centre-midfield berth, but in his first season, he only started one game for Rangers in their European run in midfield - likely due to his more attacking nature. Perhaps a similar bedding in period would be afforded to Bacuna.

He's scored some impressive goals during his time in England, including a fair few in transition. His athleticism and well-timed runs allow him to start and end moves as seen below.

He can carry the ball over distance and performs well in one-on-one duels. In our long-read into Glen Kamara and the rise of press-resistant midfielders, the Rangers Review wrote at length about the rising trend of central players adopting a more press resistant skillset - something Bacuna clearly has. 

READ MORE: Glen Kamara: The press-resistant modern midfielder making waves at Rangers 

Furthermore, Bacuna is capable of finding space in between lines and receiving the ball on the half-turn and can also manipulate space using body orientation and feints. 

He also possesses impressive vision.

As well as this, he often uses players standing off him, through fear of being beat one-on-one, as an opportunity to use a teammate as a bounce pass to progress up the pitch.

As Wagner said above, Bacuna has all the offensive skills and mobility of an offensive midfielder. 

The languid, effortless style he can play with is reminiscent of Aribo and Kamara. Both possess a skillset that can help Rangers break teams down, by beating players one-on-one to break defensive blocks.  

Reading between the lines

It’s apparent that Bacuna is at a key point in his career. Nearly 100 top-flight games in the Dutch league and appearances for the country's U21-side demonstrate the talent he has – but after three difficult years in three poor teams, he doesn’t have time to waste. He won't want to spend another two seasons fighting off relegation in the English second tier.

Speaking in 2020, Bacuna's previously quoted manager Cowley said: "Juninho is a great kid and our heart is with him.

"He has the opportunity to achieve great things in football and we are working really, really hard with him to make sure he doesn't get in his own way - to stop himself from doing that."

The need for a good environment to harness the potential Bacuna owns is obvious.

Undoubtedly, he is a player capable of playing in the Scottish Premiership – but more decisively is a player who arrived in Britain with a mass of potential that can still be tapped into and unleashed.

A look at his attributes, and recognition of the fact he has played in multiple positions, shows he is a player with a varying set of skills that needs refining to become more specialist.

His underlying stats don't throw up huge surprises, an xA of under three last year shows his lack of assists isn't down to his teammates' finishing for example. 

But equally, there remains a young player who could be signed for a relatively low fee and potentially far repay that sum. With a well functioning system around him, a clear idea of his responsibilities and freedom to create - he could be a great deal.

In the system Rangers play, to have a player that could fulfil defensive responsibility while possessing excellent athletic ability and the one-on-one skillset of a winger is extremely exciting.

Whether or not it is Bacuna who will leave Gerrard happy that his midfield for the season is complete remains to be seen - perhaps he is the next coup on an ever-growing list of bargains that have arrived at Ibrox.