80% of his game relied on his explosiveness and unorthodox movement.
No surprised that he isn't playing well since he's lost most of that. Will take time to either regain that or change his game.
It’s only been 16 months since his injury. Often takes a couple years for players to fully get back to 100% fully ACL reconstruction.
I’d say we’ll have a better understanding of what he’s going to be like going forward after the first half of next season. He’ll have the summer and preseason to work on fitness and gelling with the team. If he’s still looking like in December/January, then I’d be worried he’ll never get back to being the world class player he was for the year or so pre-injury.
- - - Updated - - -
He clearly hasn't found his touch yet but he's still finding a way to create chances.
Assist tonight and very close to another in the first half with Milik.
It’s interesting, because in the Pirlo season he had 15 goals - 11 assists in around 3200 minutes. Under Allegri last year he had 4 goals - 4 assists in like 1200 minutes (puts him at 11 goals - 11 assists if he plays the same amount of minutes as under Pilot).
This season he has 2 goals - 6 assists in 1200 minutes. His goalscoring has completely dried up post-injury, but his assist numbers/90 are the best he’s done at Juve. According to FBref he’s 98th percentile amongst attacking mids/wingers in assists and 93rd percentile in XAssists this season. That’s great. Unfortunately he’s 10th percentile in non-penalty goals and 15th percentile in non-penalty xGoals which is appalling.
Go back a season and he was 90th percentile in non-penalty goals and 96th percentile in non-penalty xGoals under Allegri last year. That’s a crazy drop off.
Conversely he was 89th percentile in assists and 72nd percentile in xAssists last year. So a decent size improvement from that this year.