Mohamed Diame was born on the 14th June 1987, making him 25 now. He was born in Creteil in France, but he plays for the Senegalese national team. He moved to Wigan in August 2009 for a fee of £3.36million. He stayed at Wigan for 3 years before moving on to West Ham United on a free transfer.

In his three-year spell at Wigan, Diame was known for his defensive work and took on the role of defensive midfielder for them. In total he made 82 starts for Wigan, and 14 appearances coming off the bench. In these 96 games he only scored 5 goals. But don’t ignore them. They were impressive goals, even more impressive coming from a defensive midfielder. Although, He was quite lucky to even be playing for Wigan. The transfer itself wasn’t as smooth as transfers normally are. It was put on hold due to problems with his heart, but after a medical, they agreed terms and Diame signed for Wigan. There were also the same worries at West Ham as to whether or not he would pass his cardiac medical. But he did, and is now a proud West Ham player.

Passing:

If we take a look at his passing stats from last season, then we see that of his 758 attempted passes, he completed 626 of them, giving him a pass competition percentage of 83%.

It’s clear that Diame will be a good addition to the side, which already has a strong midfield, let’s take a look at his passing statistics compared to similar players in the West Ham side last season (Below)

Diame is beaten out for top pass completion percentage by Jack Collison, but clearly, with the exception of Julien Faubert, the West Ham central midfield players are fairly accurate with their passing, which would make Diame a great addition to the midfield, and make it more combative and competitive for positions on a weekly basis, as you are not losing anything by dropping someone, and calling up Diame into the starting XI.

Shooting & Assists

So Diame is a fairly accurate passer, but now lets see how he faired in the assist & shooting performance, because West Ham were not in the Premier League last season, I will be using the 2010/11 season statistics:

As you can see here, Diame is bottom of the assist list, you can put this down to his injury problems last year, but also that Diame doesn’t play ‘play-maker’ role, he is more of a holding midfielder, which is why you see the likes of Mark Noble and Matty Taylor leading the assist stats.He is also in the mid range here for shooting accuracy. Having 36% of his shots hitting the target, which is a similar percentage to Noble & Taylor, but the outright leader is Kevin Nolan, having 49% of his shots hitting the target.

Tackling

So it seems as if Diame doesn’t create many goals, but he breaks up the play and starts off the move, so lets check out the tackle statistics:

Diame has the best aerial duel win percent of all West Ham midfielders, who had more than 10 duels, so he wins his fair share of headers, the next best is Matt Taylor with 43%. He also has a decent tackle win percentage, he wins near enough 3 of every 4 tackles he attempts, the best in the West Ham side is again Taylor with 79%, but Nolan was close behind with 78%. The West Ham midfield will be more combative with Diame’s arrival.

Overview

Mohamed Diame will bring strength and depth to the West Ham midfield next season, his physical presence, strength, speed & desire will make West Ham a stronger team in the Midfield area and give some much-needed protection since the departure of Scott Parker. He also has a keen eye for a pass and is a great addition by Sam Allardyce. It looks like there are more signings to come before the midnight deadline on August 31st.