Let's have a Lucca at Lorenzo
What can 6"7 striker Lorenzo Lucca offer to Nottingham Forest? I've watched him so you don't have to, so let's dig in with data, visuals & videos!
Igor Jesus is finally going to have someone to help share the load up front for Forest after the signing of Lucca - they each have their own strengths that should give Dyche some different options.
So far this season, Lucca has struggled for minutes after joining Napoli in the summer. He’s played less than 500 minutes across 16 Serie A appearances, with only 4 coming from starts. He’s had an additional 120 minutes in the Champions League too in 5 appearances.
For that reason, it’s been pretty tough for Lucca to gain any consistent form. A couple of things still stick out though, his Shot Quality is amongst the best in the league (although granted this is a small sample size), and he’s good at finding his team mates in the final third. What’s also interesting is his ability to carry the ball, but often this is from deeper areas, rather than the more dangerous carries into the box.
Last season he enjoyed a really productive season with Udinese, splitting his time almost evenly between playing as a lone striker and in a pair. He scored 5 goals as a lone striker, and 7 with someone in close company. His underlying chance creation numbers weren’t too different though, and neither were his shooting numbers either. This suggests he’s equally happy in either role.
Lucca’s Aerial Ability
Naturally, for a player of Lucca’s size you’d expect him to be a threat aerially. That is indeed in the case, but he’s not the kind of striker you’ll see overpower opposition defenders regularly. Instead he knows he has the height advantage over most, and uses some smart movement to make the most of it.
Last season, as a lone striker Lucca won 52% of his offensive aerial duels, this ranked 4th in Serie A. What’s going to interest Forest fans (and I imagine Sean Dyche) is his ability to score with his head.
Since the beginning of the 2023/24 season (when Lucca joined Udinese), only one player (former Bristol City striker Milan Djuric) has overperformed their expected headed goals number by more than Lucca’s 3.51.
It’s a similar story when we look at his Shot Quality with his Head (comparing a player’s xG with his xGOT). A figure of 100% would mean the shot quality is of the same calibre as the chance quality - Lucca’s Head Shot Quality is 140%. This is way ahead of the league average in this time of 93%.
So what we do know is that Forest have got their hands on one of the best finishers with their head in Serie A. Something else that could be viewed as a positive is that headed attempts at goal only represent 33% of Lucca’s total shot attempts during this time frame since he signed with Udinese. At Forest, who consistently look to cross, the chances are he’d have way more opportunities to use this aspect of his game.
Looking purely just at Lucca’s headers last season with Udinese, there’s a very clear trend - if Forest can create chances for Lucca to head the ball close to the 6 yard box, then good things will happen.
The big difference between Forest’s main striker option in Igor Jesus is that Lucca’s headers generally come closer to goal. This has been the main stick used to beat the Brazilian in that he doesn’t get into those high danger areas - Forest will hope that Lucca can do that for them in the second half of the season.
Can Lucca Settle in to The English Game Quickly?
This is always the big question when it comes to signing players from European leagues, especially when they’re going to be thrown in at the deep end mid-way through a season. I think Lucca will struggle with the pace of Premier League football, but more on that later on.
What Lucca does have working in his favour is that he has operated well playing for teams where the striker is asked to do a similar role as they have to do here at Forest under Dyche.
Last week I spoke about a new metric that measures the isolation of lone strikers, and nobody was surprised to read that Igor Jesus shows up as one of the most isolated front men in the Premier League. It also showed that strikers under Dyche held 7 of the Top 30 highest isolation scores in the last 4 seasons.
So it is good to know that Lucca was able to perform at a decent level for Udinese last season, whilst ranking as the 4th most isolated striker in Serie A. To add some further context to how similar the data is for Lucca last season & Igor Jesus this season - the percentage of passes received by Igor Jesus that have been longer than 25 yards is 46%, Lucca’s number last season was 45%. The average distance of passes received for Jesus has been 26.36 yards, and for Lucca it was 26.15.
Lorenzo Lucca - Scout Report
Over the last week or so I’ve been watching a bit of Lucca to work out some of his tendencies, strengths & weaknesses. Although the data I’ve used above is all from last season (due to him playing very little for Napoli this season), I wanted to look at some of his more recent appearances. For the purpose of this post, we’ll look purely at Lucca’s performance for Napoli against Cagliari in the Coppa Italia Round of 16 match on 3rd December - if you want to, you can watch this game here and make your own mind up.
Immediately in this game (and others) there were some things that I noticed pretty early on that Forest will need to get used to:
Like many strikers, in early phases of build up he’ll start in an offside position. If Forest want to be as direct as they have been in recent weeks, they’ll need to hold on to the ball a little longer whilst Lucca tries to surprise a defender with movement.
When pressing, its rare that he does so at full speed. He’s not the quickest anyway, but he generally looks to press with the intention of cutting off passing lanes, rather than forcing immediate turnovers. This obviously will also come down to what his coach wants him to do, and in theory this should suit Forest who very rarely operate with an intense, high press.
Lucca works much better as a target man when he is set and standing, than he does when he’s on the move. Forest will need to be accurate with long passes, rather than hitting them in his general direction. This goes back to what I mentioned earlier on in that despite his size he isn’t the most ‘physical’ striker.
Lucca scored Napoli’s only goal in the game, and it came from a movement we’re likely to see very often from him. At the second phase of the set piece, Lucca gradually moves toward the back post where he’s got the size advantage on zonal back-post markers.
Here’s more examples of this movement from Lucca. Better deliveries here would result in really good opportunities to score. We often see Forest’s crosses get overhit, but perhaps with a 6”7 striker at the back post he might be able to keep a couple of them on the field of play!
A couple of clips here that showcase Lucca’s movement off the ball. I’m not saying what he’s doing here is perfect, but I think this shows signs of a striker with intelligence. In the first clip, he fakes the move to drop deep to pull the defender out of the line, then tries to dart in behind. He won’t have much success with this himself, especially in the Premier League, but this could open up opportunities for Forest’s pacy wingers.
The other clips show Lucca move toward the areas that, should the ball get to him, would generate the highest quality chances. This is something he’s probably able to do better than Igor Jesus, and they’re movements we’ve seen Chris Wood make last season.
Lastly, we can look at something I mentioned earlier. Lucca is good at holding the ball up and bringing others into play when he’s given the chance to try and pin his centre back. These are things Forest will need him to do on a consistent basis. In the second clip, he does really well to turn the pass into an opportunity for him to carry, but he does go down a bit of a blind alley.
Final Conclusions:
For me, this is a pretty decent signing if you take everything into account. It’s hard to sign strikers in January unless you either have lots of money to spend (Forest don’t), or are in a very strong league position (Forest aren’t). Forest are essentially gambling £1m on Lucca with the loan fee, with no obligation after this. From an PSR perspective, Lucca has essentially cost Forest Jamie McDonnell (sold to Oxford United), and a chunk of the wages they’ll save on Zinchenko - this should still leave room to do business later this month.
For him to be a success, Forest still have to do a better job at getting bodies closer to him. He does not have ability to cover ground like Igor Jesus, but in turn he should be able to provide a better focal point than the Brazilian, and also be a better box presence.
He won’t offer the channel running that Igor Jesus does so well, but his other attributes and strengths should outweigh this, and at least Forest would have a true second striking option in the squad.
My main worries are how Lucca will adapt to the pace of the Premier League. I saw a few opportunities where it seemed he felt like he had all the time in the world, that just won’t happen here and I think it’s likely in early appearances we might see some attacks break down while he gets up to speed.
I also think that he hasn’t quite learned to make the most of his frame when engaging in battles with defenders on the move - this will probably frustrate fans in the stadium which is why it’s really important that if Forest are going direct they try to play into him, rather than making him move and jostle at the same time.
The situation Forest are in at the moment means even if Lucca can chip in with just 4 or 5 goals then he’d probably be classed as a success. I think it’s very unlikely the expensive option to buy (reportedly over £35m) gets taken up, but if he is a success than I expect Forest to go back to Napoli and try and get this figure down, perhaps even trying to do a form of swap deal with someone like Dan Ndoye, who Napoli had interest in over the summer.