Clayton Taylor is a 19-year-old winger who plays for Newcastle Jets in the A-League. Taylor began his career with Sydney F.C but broke through as an A-League player after making the move to Newcastle. Taylor has impressed, scoring four goals and adding an assist so far. He has reportedly drawn interest from MLS, as well as clubs in Europe. In my view, Taylor certainly has the potential to reach that level but would be better suited to staying in the A-League for now.
Taylor is primarily a goal-scoring winger. His greatest strength is his speed in transition and his off-the-ball movement. His game is highly reliant on volume. He attempts a lot of dribbles and, relatively speaking, a lot of shots from the corner of the box. He is not very ball-secure. He loses the ball all the time and a fairly low percentage of his take-ons actually result in him actually beating the opposing player. However, he is really good at being in good positions to receive the ball and run at defence. So he tries a lot of dribbles and enough of them work out that he is able to get shots off and produce at a reasonable rate. Becoming more efficient will be a necessity if he is to make it at a higher level. In addition to his on-the-ball skills, Taylor is very good off-the-ball. He’s good at popping up in the box to finish off chances from close range, receiving the ball in pockets of space in wide areas, and linking up with teammates to progress the ball through passing combinations. However, a major deficit in his attacking game is his ability to set up teammates. This season he has averaged 0.72 key passes and 0.1 xA per 90 which really is not a lot for an attacking winger. His vision seems to be limited and sometimes the weighting of his attempted killer passes is not so good. Getting better at setting up teammates is another area where growth will be important if he is to make it to a higher level. Taylor tracks back quite a lot and puts in a lot of defensive effort. However, he’s not that skilled of a defender and he isn’t that strong so he can’t do very much other than harass opponents. This is still valuable, of course, but his defensive impact is somewhat limited by these traits.
Despite some clear limitations Taylor has produced at a slightly above-average level in his age-19 A-League season. That is fairly impressive. I don’t think he’s ready to make the jump to a league like MLS but if he can continue to grow his offensive game that will certainly be possible in a year or two.
Target Scouting 