It has been a dismal start to the campaign for Valencia CF, who sit bottom of the La Liga table with just two points from five matches. Los Che will be looking to turn around their early-season woes on Saturday as they host Champions League newcomers Girona, and they’ll be counting on Luis Rioja to make his presence known in attack.

Since arriving from Deportivo Alavés for just over €1 million, Rioja has started on the left side of Valencia’s 4-4-2, filling in for central forward Rafa Mir who was shoehorned into an unnatural position in the first two matches. Rioja is the second-oldest outfield player in the squad after Dimitri Foulquier (31), and he’ll be looking to lead Valencia out of an early relegation scrap. In this article, we will be investigating Luis Rioja and what he can offer Valencia CF.

Name: Luis Rioja

Position: Left Winger

Country: Spain

Age: 30

Height: 176cm

Preferred Foot: Left

Last Club: Alavés

Luis Rioja began his career in Cabecense before he was signed by Real Madrid and then Celta for their academies. After 3 seasons at Celta, he signed for Marbella FC, and after a year and a half, he joined Almería. There he spent just one season and then joined Alavés where he has spent the past 5 years.

In this image, we can see that Luis Rioja has the most xG and should have scored almost 1 goal every 5 games, however, he only scored 5 goals in the whole season. Nonetheless, this tells us that he has the ability to get into goal-scoring positions which can be very valuable for Valencia who lacked the ability to score goals last season. This also tells us that he is a player that likes to attack the box and get close to the opposition’s goal to act as a goal-scoring threat.

Here we can see that Rioja has the most expected assists which shows his ability to generate opportunities which can be very useful for a team like Valencia that lacks that sort of quality. Overall, Luis Rioja has very high numbers in both expected goals and assists which can prove essential as not many players at the club have high outputs in these aspects.

From this image, we can deduce that Luis Rioja is the type of player who likes to stay on the wing as he has more than 4 crosses per 90 with close to a 35% precision. This shows that this is one of his strengths and can prove useful for Valencia having Hugo Duro and newly signed Rafa Mir as dangerous threats in the box.

This chart tells us that Luis Rioja is a very agile and nimble player who likes to dribble past opponents with more than 4 dribbles per 90 and more than a 65% success rate. This is not something essential to his position but it adds more value to his profile and gives the Valencia manager, Rubén Baraja, more tools to attack with.

This chart compares Luis Rioja with the rest of the players from La Liga in his position using percentiles in different aspects of the game. The percentiles work in the way that whatever the number, he is better than that percentage of players. If it is 70, he is better than 70%.

In this chart, we can observe that he has very poor offensive outputs compared to other wingers in the same league, being below the average in all the aspects. The reason as to why his outputs were great before and worse now is because Valencia’s players are in even lower percentiles.

In addition, we can see that he is not a player that gets involved in the possession being in the 29th percentile for passes attempted and the 23rd percentile for touches. Nonetheless, this is not necessary to play for Valencia as they are not a possession-based side. In addition, unlike what we saw before with Luis Rioja’s great dribbling capacity, he is only in the 47th percentile for take-ons completed.

Finally, we can see that he is a player that is slightly committed to his defensive duties being in a high percentile for clearances, however, he is in a low percentile for tackles + interceptions. This is something that he will have to change as at Valencia he will be defending for large periods of matches.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Luis Rioja is an excellent signing for Valencia as he adds depth and quality to a position that needed it. In addition, he improves the current wingers in the squad and adds a profile that the manager didn’t have on the left side of the pitch which was a traditional winger. In addition, he is accustomed to playing in a team that likes to defend and attack on the counter as at Alavés, this game system was very similar.

Furthermore, he has a few years of experience playing in La Liga so he shouldn’t have many issues adapting to the league or the manager. Nonetheless, he will have to be more disciplined when defending as he will be defending for large periods of matches.

By: Juan Fernandez Valencia / @ScoutLaLiga

Featured Image: @GabFoligno / NurPhoto