Niklas Dorsch is a defensive midfielder of Heidenheim, playing in 2. Bundesliga. Dorsch has been on our radar for the last couple of years and with only one year left at Heidenheim, he is an interesting player to follow. He plays for Germany U21. We think he would do well in 1. Bundesliga. For that reason we show here that he would be a good addition to Eintracht Frankfurt.

Dorsch at Heidenheim

Here is Dorsch’ most recent FBM contribution chart:

Although Heidenheim lost and Dorsch did not play his best match, especially in the first half as can be seen from his contribution chart, he is still an exceptional player according to his FBM stats:

Yet, these are his stats for playing in the 2. Bundesliga. How would he do at Eintracht Frankfurt? We think that Dorsch is a good replacement for Hasebe at Eintracht Frankfurt. Hasebe’s most recent contribution chart shows he is not playing well at the moment:

Also his FBM stats are less than those of Dorsch:

Dorsch is slightly better than Hasebe at their highest performance, but Dorsch beats Hasebe on average performance, current performance and worst performance. Yet, Hasebe plays on a higher level. So we have to take that into account.

Dorsch playing for Eintracht Frankfurt

Taking into account minutes played, difference between both clubs and both competitions, we get the following results for Dorsch playing at Eintracht Frankfurt:

What you see in the first row, is the performance level of Eintracht Frankfurt in the 1. Bundesliga. In the second row we subtract Hasebe’s contribution to the performance of Eintracht Frankfurt. That is only a small difference because Hasebe is not contributing that much on average. In the third row we add Dorsch to the expected performance of Eintracht Frankfurt. Finally, we can see how Eintracht Frankfurt’s performance would increase or decrease in row 4. Overall performance of Eintracht Frankfurt would rise as would attack and transitioning. Defensive performance would suffer slightly.

Eintracht Frankfurt’s FBM Team Score would increase to 115 points up from 102 points. There is an 80% correlation between FBM Team Score and future ranking in the league. If other teams would not improve Eintracht Frankfurt would rise to rank 10 in the league table if they played with Dorsch rather than Hasebe.

What is Dorsch worth?

Our model takes into account, position, highest transfer fee in the current season, record transfer fee, difference in competition, club, player age and length, international status and FBM stats. Due to the Corona crisis, it is much more uncertain how future transfer fees will develop. Our model is still based on the pre-Corona circumstances. 

When we calculate what we call the replacement fee for players. This is the amount of money the current employer of the player can expect to spend on a replacement who is as good as their current player. In short: clubs should not transfer players for less than the replacement fee, nor buy players for more than the replacement fee. As the replacement fee differs from club to club, there is room for negotiations. We also calculate what the player would be worth one year later if he is able to transfer to an even better club. All assuming his FBM stats remain the same.

Here are the replacement values for Dorsch:

Replacement value for Heidenheim	£2,592,419
Replacement value for Eintracht Frankfurt	£3,861,435
Replacement value for Schalke 04	£6,672,353

TransferMarkt currently values Dorsch at £4.05m. We think that Dorsch is slightly overvalued on TransferMarkt. If Eintracht Frankfurt were able to buy Dorsch for less than £3,861,435, they would have a good deal. A deal that might make them almost £2m a year later, if they would transfer Dorsch to the next club and Dorsch would perform at the level we expect him to do. As a reminder, we predicted that Dalmau would be worth 1.75m euro to Heracles and they transferred him a year later for 1.7m euro.

For us the most important thing about FBM stats, is that we calculate the probabilities that a player is able to contribute to a specific team. Here are the probabilities that Dorsch is able to contribute to Eintracht Frankfurt:

Probability that Dorsch contributes to Frankfurt	63
Probability that Dorsch contributes to the attack of Frankfurt	72
Probability that Dorsch contributes to the defense of Frankfurt	25
Probability that Dorsch contributes to the transitioning & build up of Frankfurt	46