Ten intriguing Ligue 1 players this season
January 19th, 2025by Mohamed
The Ligue 1 season is over 50% completed this season, around the point where team and individual success at least for that particular season starts to lose out its novelty act, for both good performances and bad with the financial restrictions that Ligue teams not named PSG have, more times than not Ligue 1 has gotten the reputation of being a league where the majority of their top players develop and leave at a young age to other European leagues.
In a season where the goal scoring rate in Ligue 1 has increased from last season's rate, it's given way for numerous talents to show their work and in certain case, blossom under a much heavier workload.
Let's take a look at how the ten players have fared so far.
Note: The radars used in this piece were created by Ted Knuston and Sami Hernia.
Divock Origi (Lille OSC)
It's been fair to say that Divock Origi has had his name in the news a couple of times this season, though it hasn't really been due to his play.
There've been numerous reports of Liverpool trying to recall the Belgian forward from his loan, which would entail paying extra to end the loan deal on top of the transfer fee paid in the summer.
It's quite interesting to see just how much Liverpool has gone through to try and get him back considering that Origi has been bad this season.
His play has been a microcosm of the problems the club have had. Lille have actually been good at creating chances, ranking in the top 5 in chances created. But they've been terrible at their finishing. The club have scored 15 non penalty goals this season but according to their pseudo ExPG data, they should be scoring 21.63 goals.
Other than his dribbling and passing %, there's nothing in his data this season that's been good. The saving grace? Origi is only 19 years old, and 19 year old players not named Raheem Sterling shouldn't be asked to have the type of burden that Origi has had to this season.
Jordan Ayew (Lorient)
The younger brother of Andre. It's quite funny to think about, but Jordan Ayew is already 23 years old. It seems like just yesterday that Jordan Ayew was an electric spark plug with Marseille.
Now he's a "grizzled" veteran with a Lorient side that have slowly but surely rebounded from their early scoring problems this season (something I wrote about it a couple of months ago).
Having said that, a lot like Origi, Ayew hasn't been particularly good this season, but it's been for different reasons.
With Origi he's been hesitant in terms of shot data, Ayew has been the opposite. He's been unafraid to let it fly, but
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