The Middlesbrough player who needs to sharpen his offensive game

Chris Wilder’s Middlesbrough side travelled to top of the table Fulham last night and suffered a 1-0 defeat. 

The game was largely equal in terms of possession and Middlesbrough actually had more overall shots with 15 against Fulham’s six.

However, only two of Middlesbrough’s shots were on target showing a key area of improvement to take away from this game.

Chris Wilder recently called upon his midfielder Marcus Tavernier to score more goals and contribute more assists, feeling he was otherwise really near the top of his game.

Here, we take a look at Tavernier’s statistics from the season using Wyscout to delve into this a bit more.

Passing

If we look at Tavernier’s game in the most basic form to start with it looks good.

The midfielder’s passing accuracy for the season so far is 79.8% which is high and shows he is a reliable midfielder.

Furthermore, his passing accuracy for passes to the final third is 66.6% which is again fairly high.

Therefore, we can see that the 23-year-old feels confident with his passing game and is able to contribute a reliable service in midfield allowing his team to play it on the floor going forward.

Furthermore, his passing accuracy for the final third shows that his attacking players are able to look at him for balls showing he is getting himself into good spaces.

Contributions to goals

Tavernier’s average for offensive duels won this summer is 38.8% which could be worse but it’s not as high as Chris Wilder would like for a player he is encouraging to get forward.

The fact he is good at passing but struggles more on the duels suggests that Tavernier likes to play a fast pace passing game and that’s what he feels most comfortable doing.

Here we can see he will have to work on his duels which