I've taken a closer look at Jayden Danns' Liverpool career so far - here's what Sunderland fans can expect

What can Sunderland supporters expect from deadline day loan signing Jayden Danns? Well, the honest answer is, for the time being at least, not very much. The teenager arrived on Wearside during the dying embers of the transfer window, only to uncover an injury in his medical that has since required him to return to parent club Liverpool for a period of rehabilitation.

Still, the hope on Wearside is that once he is fit and ready, he will be able to make a notable impact in the final, crucial stretch of the Black Cats’ Championship promotion push. Speaking after Danns was unveiled at the Stadium of Light, sporting director Kristjaan Speakman said: “Jayden is an extremely talented player, who fits the profile we were searching for.

“His availability was always going to be determined late in the window due to Liverpool’s schedule and the demand for him was high, so we worked extremely hard to secure the player. It’s unfortunate that the medical process highlighted an issue that ultimately requires Jayden to take a period of rest. Despite this, he remained highly motivated to come to Sunderland and as such we agreed to collaborate with Liverpool to ensure there is an opportunity for him to join us at a later date. We remain excited by the prospect of working with him and look forward to supporting him throughout the upcoming period.”

Evidently, then, Sunderland are of the belief that they have secured a talent worth waiting for, and a cursory glance at his fledgling career on Merseyside would go some way towards supporting that line of thinking. In nine senior outings he has registered three goals, and just last week he became the youngest player to start a Champions League match in Liverpool’s illustrious European history.

Those, of course, are the headlines, but the Black Cats’ recruitment in recent years has moved away from superficiality, and a closer inspection of Danns’ in-game output does seemingly explain why there was such an eagerness to bring him to the North East, even in spite of his injury setback.

For one thing, Danns is a wonderfully precocious finisher. Over the course of his nine first team appearances thus far, he has averaged 0.76 goals per 90 minutes. As a point of comparison, Eliezer Mayenda - who is enjoying a superb breakout campaign for Sunderland - averages 0.45 goals per 90 minutes while operating as a centre-forward, as per stats database Wyscout.

But Danns’ hit rate becomes even more impressive when taken into consideration alongside his xG. At the time of writing, the 19-year-old is expected to score 0.61 goals per game, meaning that he is, generally speaking, scoring 0.15 more goals than he is justifiably supposed to. Again, as a parallel, Mayenda is working in a deficit, rather than a surplus, of 0.07.

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There are other positives to be gleaned too. Danns averages 12.48 passes per 90 minutes at the point of attack, almost double Mayenda’s tally of 6.29, and his accuracy of 81.8% is some 6.8% better than the Spaniard’s. The Liverpool prodigy also boasts a dribble success rate that is a notable 19.2% better than Mayenda’s, and he tends to contest and win more duels on average than his new teammate as well.

None of this is to say that Danns is wholesale upgrade on Mayenda through the middle, or that the Spaniard is an inferior talent by any means, but given the impact that the Sunderland man has already made this season, and considering the areas in which the loanee statistically outstrips him, it is at least fair to assume that the incoming prospect will offer a decent and worthwhile option to Regis Le Bris as he looks to supplement Wilson Isidor’s notable goal-scoring threat.

In other words, Danns should be a good signing for Sunderland. The big question now, however, is how long it will take before we find out for definite one way or the other whether he actually is.

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