Forget Adam Wharton: Liverpool can sign monstrous alternative for half price

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Liverpool remain admirers of Kees Smit and reportedly scouted the midfielder during AZ Alkmaar’s clash with Sunderland.TEAMtalk now claim that representatives from the Reds’ Premier League rivals – Chelsea, Tottenham, Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest, Crystal Palace, and Brighton – were also in attendance.The Dutch midfielder is said to be valued at around the £51.5m mark.Could Kees Smit be an alternative to Liverpool-linked Adam Wharton?(Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)Okay, so a bit of a complicated one here. Smit technically can operate as a holding midfielder and an attacking midfielder but has historically played firmly central midfield.Similarly to Adam Wharton, the Eredivisie star has impressed with his ability to progress the ball with his varied passing range and create chances.

Kees Smit’s stats (per 90) Percentiles 0.35 xA 79th 40.17 successful passes 92nd 83.1% successful pass percentage 60th 1.81 accurate long balls 90th 50% accurate long ball percentage 18th 3.02 chances created 82nd 0.6 big chances created 71st * Kees Smit’s stats in the 2026/27 Eredivisie season, as of 18/09/26, (via Fotmob)Want more Empire of the Kop coverage? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for news you can trustJudging by pass accuracy, it certainly appears that Smit is attempting riskier passes (in a bid to create chances) with relative frequency – and he’s reasonably good at it too, taking into account his average chance creation numbers.

So, we can see why Liverpool have reportedly been tracking the player.But does he sit deep enough, regularly enough, to provide a foil for Liverpool’s more naturally marauding midfielders (Ryan Gravenberch, Alexis Mac Allister and Dominik Szoboszlai)?Wharton and Smit cover a lot of ground(Photo by Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)A quick glance at the pair’s heatmaps tells you quite a bit about the footballers.(Heatmaps courtesy of Fotmob)Wharton looks pretty evenly balanced between sitting inside his own half (even dropping back into the heart of his own box). Adam Wharton’s stats (per 90) Kees Smit’s stats (per 90) 5.8 recoveries 5.56 recoveries 0.6 possession won in final third 0.8 possession won in final third * Adam Wharton and Kees Smit’s stats from the 2025/26 Premier League and Eredivisie seasons (Fotmob)There are some interesting raw materials here with Smit, and you can see how he could be developed into a deeper-lying playmaker, with range to progress the ball through dribbling, if paired alongside a tactically astute midfielder in the pivot who knows when to stay put.From our point of view, at 20 years of age, you’d have to think he’s still quite mouldable for a manager like Andoni Iraola, certainly enough so that we could look to curb his bad habits.And at roughly half the price of the reportedly £100m-valued Adam Wharton (talkSPORT).