Adam Wharton – Scout Report

After rising through the ranks at Blackburn Rovers to become a regular feature in the first eleven this season, Adam Wharton was quickly snapped up by the Eagles for £22million. Since then, the 20-year-old’s taken to the top flight like a duck to water. It’s been an effortless transition that has showcased his plethora of talents and has made him a mainstay in the side’s midfield setup.

Playstyle

In Attack

What makes Wharton such a special talent is his operation speed. He is a lethal weapon when it comes to lightning quick progression, from his touch to his pass.

This all starts with his awareness. The 20-year-old always scans before receiving, and not just for opposition pressure but, importantly, for where his teammates are located ahead of him. This is what allows him to play through the lines with his first touch as often as he does. Even more impressive is how he applies this to any phase, be it in a period of settled buildup or immediately following a turnover where there is pressure to escape.

He’s able to locate and access teammates with the sort of speed you don’t see all that often, especially not with the sort of fearlessness Wharton possesses in his pass selection. Because he’s so adept at playing forwards with his first touch and is so alive to where his teammates are ahead of him, you get lots of defensive interceptions that are also offensive actions, be it setting forward touches or direct passes.

This ability to quite literally turn defence into attack is such a huge asset for a team like Palace who rely on quality transitions in many games. This season, Wharton has so far notched up an impressive average of 1.56 key passes (81st percentile) from a stubbornly deep position because he’s so good at feeding the attackers before the opposition have had a chance to shut them out. On top of this, he has 3 assists to his name in 2024 and his average of 0.18 xG assisted ranks in the 88th percentile for midfielders across the Big 5 and Europe in the last year.

Obviously, playing at such a pace has its upsides but there are the odd trade-offs. Wharton can be guilty of missing some passing opportunities because he hasn’t afforded himself the time to assess every option. Equally, the nature of releasing first-time into lower-percentage targets means he’s at risk of turning over the ball fairly frequently. This is why his short and medium-range passing percentages are each around the 84.5% mark, which doesn’t rank too highly by midfielders’ standards (14th & 30th percentiles respectively).

Still, I wouldn’t be too dissuaded by those lowly figures in relation to his quick-turnaround passing, not least because the quality of it, from thought process to execution, is so often special. There isn’t even a huge cap on his range, either, which is especially apparent when he sets himself and with a bit more time.

This is another part of his game that is joyous to watch because Wharton is such a great receiver of the ball. Using that awareness, he knows exactly how best to take on the ball the vast majority of the time, and he uses his low centre of gravity to nimbly take it into his body and shift in alternate and opposing directions with ease.

As can be seen in some of the examples below, his knowledge of the direction of pressure informs what foot he takes it with – which he applies well because he’s perfectly comfortable using either foot – as well as how he can do so to open up his body to what’s ahead.

With that ability to shift his body so easily, he can afford to receive ball-facing and with his back to goal a lot of the time. Something this is great for when you boast the forward awareness, plus speed of thought and release, he does is that he can use his negative body shape to invite pressure that expands the space for him to play into first-time.

He’s also very good at knowing when to draw fouls, based on both game states and when he’s late to realising an angle of pressure he didn’t account for. He does well to put his weaker right side between man and ball to then invite the foul.

His weight of control in general is another standout quality. It’s rare either boot lets him down on that front. Again, informed by awareness, he knows what space to cushion it into and how far into or away from his body he should take it, allowing him to comfortably release the ball with his next touch.

When he has that added bit of time to play forwards, he’s never reluctant to field the long ball. He’s very alert to the runners on the far side and is always looking to fizz and float diagonals out to runners on the left side. The one let-down with regards to his final ball is just accuracy. In transitions, he can be a bit lax with his use of the outside of the boot, despite being a very capable weaker foot passer. On the aerial ball front, except for when the through ball is rushed into losing sight of its target, it can often be fine margins that come with the type of ball he’s playing that see it land shy of its target.

When he fields it with the inside of the boot, he doesn’t seem to be doing a whole lot wrong. He just doesn’t have the best measure of these passes (yet). What’s encouraging is that the failed attempts never discourage him, and that is evident in both his 5.5 attempted long ball average (steady 55th percentile) and 0.22 through balls (69th percentile) versus 55.4% accuracy (27th percentile).

What’s encouraging about these aspects of his game is that they could be even more prolific if he can improve, not just the consistency of execution but also his willingness to get forwards.

For all the positivity in Wharton’s passing game, he is a very stubborn midfielder in the positional sense. He will not budge from that second line ahead of the back-three, and this can come at a cost.

Wharton, as we’ve seen, is a very high tempo passer. He isn’t the kind, despite always wanting the ball, to slow play down to a deliberate pace, nor is he someone that directly engages opponents as often as he could, or should. When he receives in the initial phases of play and doesn’t have an immediate forward option to field the ball to, he can become a bit fidgety and release the ball to whichever defender has the most space.

Theoretically, this is a smart play, but it’s ignorant of things like trigger presses and it asks his teammates to do the hard work of creating separations and successful passages to bypass the resulting pressure.

He’s not the kind of deep midfielder who will pause on the ball and/or look to pass and move. Once he releases the ball, he stays in the line he is, which can make ball circulation too predictable. There aren’t enough occasions where he carries the ball with the intent of drawing open space for the centre-back on the near side, for instance. Or, to go a step further in that regard, with the intention of then rotating forwards to allow others to drop and receive off the blind-side.

Given how he offers to the ball – always in front of his marker, rarely doing much to receive beyond pulling into as much deep space as possible, so not to congest vertical passing lanes – it’s tough for him to be a repeat receiver once his backwards pass has triggered a collective press. It’s, then, unsurprising that his average pass amount totals to 39.17 (19th percentile), which goes further to explaining his low completion rate (76.5% – 18th percentile) than the erraticisms of his forward passing alone do.

There are plenty of times, also, in transitional phases where a forward has ended up deeper on the ball and Wharton’s reluctance to push through the lines has both congested the space for the ball-holder as well as limited the options going forwards.

Overall, there’s a lack of engagement with that space beyond his opposite number. Be it in his lack of movement – which might even benefit from dropping towards the first line, as well as into the attacking line – or in how he doesn’t look to exploit invited pressure as well as he could.

With his pressure resistance, initial burst and quickness of passing, it feels like a waste that he doesn’t combine past opponents more frequently, or look to take them on. He’s a capable hurdler of initial challenges but seemingly doesn’t trust himself to exploit open spaces ahead, and he doesn’t have the strategic nouse to at least use them to smartly open spaces for others.

What’s been somewhat encouraging to see, though, are subtle signs of development under Glasner in this regard. Sprinkled here and there are growing instances of him looking to combine, as well as looking to push through the lines off the blind-side. They can appear, and likely are, very system driven but nonetheless could help Wharton to become more of a presence in the final third, not just a deep connector.

Whilst there’s not a lot to shout about in terms of goal threat beyond his knack for sweetly driving many of the shooting opportunities from range, there’s a lot more that could be said in the future about his passing and link play with regards to chance creation should he find himself mixing with the attackers between the lines more often. The current team’s setup certainly offers the necessary safety blanket to facilitate plenty more forward ventures, as well.

In Defence

Standing at around 6ft and with a pretty skinny frame, Wharton isn’t a typically intimidating defensive midfield unit but what he lacks in physical presence, he makes up for in agility. He has proven himself to be a very capable and effective tackler thanks to his, more often than not, excellent technical approach.

What Wharton does well that many others (including the very best) don’t is always spread his stance when he goes to close down an opponent. Many players are guilty of pressing an opponent with a narrow ‘silhouette’ that makes it hard for them to cover greater angles and change direction, but Wharton does a great job of ensuring he always assumes a wider, lower stance by the time he reaches his opponent.

Whilst he might initially get out to the ball with a narrow body shape sometimes, he ensures each time that he split steps off his right to help him shift direction, either doing so early to react to a player’s ball-carrying direction or when going to challenge so that he can shut off both sides as widely as possible.

With his skinnier frame and lower centre of gravity, he finds it easier to duck into these crouched stances with far greater mobility, enabling him to shift quickly in time with the ball-holder. It also makes it easier for him to cleanly execute sliding tackles, as he’s sliding out of most of them as a way of getting lower and affording himself more balance, rather than sliding in with more reckless abandon, as can be the case for most.

While there are imperfections to these lateral shifts, they good enough to have seen him rack up an average of 3.42 tackles per 90 in the Premier League this season, which, according to fbref, ranks in the 96th percentile.

Beyond the instructions usually bestowed upon him by Glasner in Palace’s current 3-4-3 – to apply frequent pressure out to the midfielders that offer short, so as to join close to Mateta whilst maintaining a cover shadow that guards the space between the lines – the 20-year-old is fairly reserved, positionally.

Particularly when dealing with play coming through the middle, Wharton shows impressive patience and awareness, be it in general play or versus counterattacks, to hold steady, scan to be alert to overloads around him, and to wait for the right moment to move. This has allowed him to accumulate plenty of interceptions.

Wharton currently averages 1.49, which also ranks impressively in the 88th percentile.

That said, where his awareness and the solidity of his approach can come into question is when play moves wide. In these situations, it exposes how easily his eyes can be drawn and leads to him losing focus of the surrounding picture. Wharton will often see an opponent worth moving to close down but will do so without any regard for the space he has to defend.

See below how he wants to engage the players coming inside with the low, spread stance but does so square-on and facing the touchline, which leaves the forward lane on the inside way too exposed. Once he’s committed to doing this, not only is it hard for him to intervene this way, but it also leaves him cut out of the defensive phase.

In a lot of these instances, there should be a far greater balance between pressing out and being ready to pivot back inside to guard the space, as opposed to committing on a line that leaves too much space between the lines following his inevitably failed challenge.

This is also reflected in his figures, as he averages a very high number of dribblers challenged per 90 (3.27 – 95th percentile), but loses a lot, too (1.56 – 14th percentile).

The best argument you can make for some of these decisions, beyond pure lack of awareness and positional discipline, is the want to take time away. There’ve been a handful of instances where he’s jumped the gun to not only aggressively press out to a receiver but also look to nip in front and dispossess them more ruthlessly.

Circumstantially, with the right level of supporting pressure from teammates, this can effectively squeeze the receiver. However, in most cases, it can negate the positive, widened, lower base he sets himself up with. Whereas a lot of players who press from behind with an upstanding posture then struggle to leverage themselves and change direction, Wharton can be wasteful of what he gains in doing the opposite by trying to make these challenges that can then help the ball onto the blind-sided space that he’s just vacated.

What makes these forward-thinking approaches all the more damaging is the lacking recovery. It’s clear Wharton doesn’t have that true defender’s instinct because he’s often a one-and-done type of challenger, whose sights are only set on what’s caught his attention in that moment. This means that, despite assuming body stances that enable him to change direction quickly, he doesn’t utilise it because he’s so slow to react to or read even the most telegraphed one-two combinations.

Wharton’s over-fixation on the ball over the space is what also leads to him hunting down the location of the ball/player in that moment, as opposed to considering even just where they’re headed as a way of better intercepting play. Since he’s not a player who throws his body around in challenges and doesn’t have the physicality to overhaul opponents, these types of challenges are easy to shrug off.

There are also times where he’s not even engaging in the play at all but because he’s watching just the ball above all else, he loses track of the spaces he needs to shut down, leaving exploitable holes inside.

This loss of focus and intensity is also worryingly persistent in the box, which allows attackers to receive in cutback positions off of him without much, or any, contest.

Again, this is laid bare in his statistical run-down, with just 0.22 shots blocked per 90 – ranking as low as the 37th percentile.

This, in particular, is a big reason why he’s much more suited to an accompanying defensive midfield or #8 role, where more faith is placed in his partnering #6 to ensure coverage of the space in front of the defence. Thankfully, with a shift to a back-three under Glasner, Wharton’s been afforded the necessary leeway.

Outro

Wharton’s skillset, while rough around some edges, is very promising. Despite playing as a defensive midfielder, it feels as though he is often the one putting a ceiling on his own forward potential when he could be an even greater asset by pushing further up the pitch at times. It’s clear he functions best as a pivoting player, either in a midfield two or, preferably, to me, as an #8, especially on the right side.

Palace is exactly the sort of team that fits him because a lot of forward play works to maximise what Wharton does best with the ball, as well as providing him the defensive support that allows him to flaunt his technical prowess. I think the aforementioned downsides of his game, both offensively and defensively, can be well-developed under the right coach, which Glasner could well be.

I’d hesitate to project him to move up to the very top of the league because of what he lacks in settled possession phases and in aspects of his athleticism, but with improvements on the horizon, he could eventually fit into a number of top sides as, if nothing else, a very useful and dynamic cog. For that reason, it feels relatively unsurprising to see that Bayern Munich are rumoured to be sniffing around, especially given their recent history of English imports. Even shouts for a call-up this summer, whilst perhaps sounding premature, are befitting of Wharton’s qualities and what he could bring to the sort of setup Southgate usually provides.

Whether he does move up in the league or not, there’s no doubt he’s here to stay and has time to play with.

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