The formerly highly rated midfield player at the football club appears to have slipped between the cracks.
Sibley joined the team through the academy and made a name for himself really quickly.
But lately, he has not been as good; instead of being a consistent starter and valuable member of the club, he has been deployed in a variety of roles and doesn’t really have a permanent spot on the roster.
A few seasons ago, when the midfielder was making waves in the Championship and drawing interest from clubs like as Leeds United and Coventry City, Sibley was very different.
Sibley made a name for himself with the first team during the 2019–20 campaign after being promoted as a young player.
Sibley had a regular role in the first team for the next two Championship seasons and then in the third tier after that. Sibley had 42 appearances in the league the previous season, tallying one assist and three goals.
In contrast, Sibley appeared in 26 games in 2021–2022 and made 11 starts. In the 1,115 minutes he spent playing football, he scored one goal.
The midfielder’s xG ended at 1.8, indicating below-average performance. Even though, once more, he fell short of Sibley’s expectations regarding his xA—a 1.8 assist rate— but the midfielder didn’t grab a single assist, as per Fbref.com.
However, Sibley kept up his good work, finishing 167 of the 251 passes he attempted for a completion percentage of 66.5—not too shabby for a Championship midfielder tasked with turning around a faltering team. Even though he was at ease maintaining possession of the ball in short areas, 106 of his 120 short passes were completed, indicating that his more daring passing style was the reason behind the decline in several neat passing metrics.
That didn’t appear to deter teams like Leeds and Coventry, though, as both were said to have a strong interest in the player come the summer transfer window of 2022.
Back in the summer of 2022, there was a report stating that Coventry was winning the hunt to sign Derby’s Sibley and that they were keen.
Under former manager Marcelo Bielsa, Leeds was also a fan of the midfield player in addition to the Sky Blues. Following the club’s elevation to the Premier League, at the close of the summer 2020 transfer window, they expressed interest in the transfer. In his final ten games of that campaign, Sibley had netted five goals, including a hat-trick against Millwall, four of which came when the season resumed following lockdown.
During this period, the Rams were facing financial difficulties, and it was anticipated that Sibley would be traded because he was one of the team’s best prospects and would fetch a high price.
Sibley has stayed at Pride Park ever since, although nothing seems to come close to him leaving.
The 22-year-old midfielder has battled for form this season, so while he was obviously rated and being monitored by a few teams in the second tier, that seems far off today.
Sibley has had a more difficult campaign as he has fluctuated in and out of the starting lineup and has found it difficult to establish a spot in the lineup.
With an average of just 43 minutes per game, the 22-year-old has started 10 of the 22 games for which he has been available. In 940 minutes of play, Sibley has scored one goal, according to SofaScore.com. With an average of just 0.9 shots per game, just 0.3 of which are on target, he is looking like a shell of the goal-scoring midfielder he was once thought of as.
Sibley has only produced one major opportunity this season, and he only has one assist. Additionally, the midfield player only forces 0.5 crucial passes per game. To put it plainly, he’s not participating in those pivotal moments that he did at
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