Have never watched him....is he any good?
As an Argentinian i feel i can bring some input but make of it what you will:
Paredes was highly rated since his days at Boca.
In fact, he was tipped to be the great successor to Mascherano and many saw him as the perfect replacement for him in the national team at that time. Nedless to say he didnt become that.
At Roma he did well and established himself as an important player of the squad: i remember i wanted us to bring him to Juve at that time, but well yeah, thats 7 years ago.
I cant remember why Roma sold him to Zenit , but im pretty sure it was because of economical problems, not because they wanted to get rid of him. He was doing well for them so i think they valued him there.
I didnt follow him in the Russian league, maybe RUS could have given some input if he still was here lol.....
At PSG he became a captain, but its hard to evaluate him in that team due to their dominance of their domestic league and unbalanced opposition.
What i will say is that he is a tidy player, with a good passing range and a good tackler.
His technique on the ball is above average, which is expected from your typical Argentinian midfielder.
He is also a yellow card magnet, but considering the complete pussification of our midfield the last years, i dont really see this as a negative tbh.
However he comes with certain limitations that are important to note:
He relies on passing the ball to other players that can carry it into offensive territory : what i mean by that is that you should manage your expectations when it comes to his ball carrying skills:
He is not a player that will break trough offensive lines and start attacks: he is more the type of player that lays the foundation for others to that with his distribution. Maybe thats to be expected due to his position, but its a pretty important detail imo as we currently struggle with exactly this aspect in our attacking patterns.
In Argentina the current player that he relies upon and has this role has been De Paul.
In PSG that player has been Veratti, with a couple of variations like Draxler
My hope is that Locatelli will be this player in Juve and that he can benefit from Paredes and be pushed further up the field.
As we saw from the Samp game: Locatelli is not suited to play the role that Paredes does at all, so this might be a good thing for us.
All in all my conclusion is that this is a decent transfer, but expectations should be managed.
He will definitely improve our ability to control the tempo of games and contain possession, but its not going to make huge contributions to our attacking patterns alone.
We had a shit ton of possesion against Samp, but in the end it was useless, because we completely failed to link the midfield to the attack. Paredes wont fix this alone.
I think we still rely massively on Pogba/locatelli to glue our midfield with our attack anyways, and thats where the real question should be asked:
Will Paredes help them operate more freely and free up their defensive duties: the short answer is yes.
All in all a decent transfer, but as i said: his success here will rely on a bigger picture and more than just him.
Paredes will do what he usually does without massively changing games.
I think this video gives a good understanding of how he operates as a player and i would recommend give it a watch:
Maybe this is overkill but its my assesment of him and the transfer in its complete form.
Hope you find it useful.