How Big a Steal Is Luiz Adriano for AC Milan?

As AC Milan worked to improve their squad after one of the team's worst seasons since the Silvio Berlusconi purchased the team in 1986, the striker position was something that was considered an area of need.

Since selling Zlatan Ibrahimovic to Paris Saint-Germain in 2012, Milan has had a hard time locking down a go-to goalscorer. In those three years, the Rossoneri have had Giampaolo Pazzini, Antonio Cassano, Stephan El Shaarawy, Mario Balotelli, Alessandro Matri, Fernando Torres and Mattia Destro as line-leaders. While some, such as El Shaarawy and Balotelli, showed impressive flashes, no one ever made the job his own.

Co-vice president and transfer guru Adriano Galliani first identified Jackson Martinez as his top target, but that move broke down and the Colombian ended up going to Atletico Madrid. The team then turned its attention to Carlos Bacca, triggering the former Sevilla man's €30 million buyout clause.

But Bacca wasn't the only forward Milan had their eyes on. Aside from the saga that saw Berlusconi try to get Ibrahimovic to come back to Italy, another purchase was made with much less fanfare.

That purchase was Luiz Adriano. The Brazilian had been at Shakhtar Donetsk since 2007 and become the team's all-time leading scorer. He wasn't one of the six Brazilian players who initially refused to report to to the team after armed conflict marred the region, but the instability the fighting has caused probably has to be considered a factor in his decision to make his €8 million move.

The numbers involved in their respective moves will obviously shift the majority of the attention onto Bacca. Adriano, however, could make as much of an impact, if not more, and at a third of the price. When it comes down to it, he could prove to be Milan's steal of the window.

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Accurate and detailed statistics for the Ukrainian Premier League are hard to come by. The basics, though, are there. In his eight years at Shakhtar, he played in 162 league games and scored 77 goals—good for 0.48 goals per game.

That's an impressive number, but there are some caveats. The UPL is smaller than Europe's big leagues. Before the fighting began, the league was a 16-team affair, but the unrest has reduced that number to 14 the last two seasons. That significantly reduces the sample size, even though he spent eight years in Donetsk.

That sample size does partially explain the relative lack of eye-catching numbers in the goal department. Since he became a regular starter for Shakhtar in 2009, he failed to reach double digits in league goals twice, including last season, and he only hit 20—generally considered the benchmark for truly top-level strikers—once, in 2013-14.

Those numbers, of course, are mitigated by the small size of the league. Scoring 20 in a season that only lasts for 26 games would be quite a feat indeed. His overall averages are proof enough he's an efficient and able finisher.

Sample sizes are again an issue when we delve into his numbers in European competition, but the more detailed statistics available for the Champions League and Europa League can give us a better understanding of what Milan is getting.

According to WhoScored.com, Adriano has played 38 games in Europe since 2010—all but two of them in the Champions League—for a total of 3,163 minutes on the field. He's scored 22 times—more than once every two games. A look at WhoScored's detailed stats shows just how impressive he's been on the big stage.

What stands out about his play on the continent is how well he shoots. Last season, when he scored nine times in the group stage, he took a total of 15 shots in eight games. He hit the target with 10 of them, and one more hit the post. That's more than two thirds of his shots hitting the frame.

That has been a constant theme of his game in Europe throughout the last five years. He has taken a total of 59 shots and hit the target with 34 of them. That's an accuracy rate of almost 58 percent.

In the three years before WhoScored began tracking him, Adriano scored 10 times in 27 European games, including the opener in Shakhtar's 2-1 extra-time win over Werder Bremen in the 2009 UEFA Cup final.

While the sample size is again somewhat limited, it's clear Adriano has a lot of experience at the top level of the game in Europe and that experience has come with success.

There are, of course, some things Adriano is going to have to prove before he's accepted by some observers.

The biggest thing people will be looking for is whether he can adapt to Serie A. The UPL is not a league that is held in high esteem. Between its small size and questionable quality, it's fair to question whether he can have the same kind of success in a bigger competition.

Given Italy's reputation for tactical sophistication and defensive ability, Serie A is a challenge for any striker. Adriano is going to have to get used to the more tactical nature of the Italian game, as well as having regular dates with the likes of Kostas Manolas and Andrea Ranocchia.

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That's to say nothing of Juventus, who can claim to be the best defensive team in Europe over the last four years and can trot out the likes of Andrea Barzagli, Leonardo Bonucci, Giorgio Chiellini, Martin Caceres, Stephan Lichtsteiner, Patrice Evra and promising youngster Daniele Rugani to stymie opposing forwards—backed by arguably the best goalkeeper in history in Gianluigi Buffon.

A lot of Adriano's detractors also point to his play at the international level—or lack thereof.

Now aged 28, Adriano only received his first call-up to the Brazil national team a year ago. He's been capped four times, but he hasn't ever been played in high-level situations and wasn't even in consideration for the 2014 World Cup.

That's somewhat strange considering the predicament Brazil has found itself in when it comes to their front line recently. For the first time in a while, they have no quality No. 9 to go along with its main flair player.

In the run-up to the World Cup Luiz Felipe Scolari counted on the likes of Fred and Jo to man the striker position. This past summer, Dunga opted to bring Diego Tardelli—a 30-year-old who plays in China—and a washed-up Robinho to Chile for the Copa America while not even giving Adriano a second look.

Given the complete lack of quality in Brazil's setup at the No. 9 spot, the fact a player who is thought of as highly as Adriano has been frozen out is puzzling. If he isn't considered better than the strikers who have bumbled through the last two major tournaments, how good can he really be?

Also of concern is how well he might be able to pair with Bacca. The two are very similar players—poachers who can get themselves a one-touch assist or two but aren't necessarily going to be able to make the space for themselves. Will they be too similar and cancel each other out?

At the end of the day, we still don't know what Milan is going to be getting. The Ukrainian Premier League is such a poor gauge of true talent it's going to take some time to see what he's going to be able to do against better competition.

But if Adriano turns out to be the scorer everyone saw at Shakhtar, Milan will have made one of the steals of the summer. Purchased at a fraction of Bacca's price, if Adriano succeeds, Galliani will have made a true steal in the transfer market for the first time in a long time.