Can Kemal Aydın keep Rodrighão out of the Rotherham side?
Three starts, a 7.7 average and two goals: the Turkish attacking midfielder has made the number ten shirt his own at Rotherham United, and the man who used to wear it is waiting.
The ball arrives at Kemal Aydın's feet on the edge of the area, back to goal, a defender tight against his shoulders. He does not rush. He rolls it once, feels the weight shift behind him, and turns into the space he has made for himself. By the time the shot leaves his boot the crowd at Rotherham Stadium is already rising. That is the picture of him that has stuck with me this autumn: a young player who plays as though the noisy parts of the game happen a half-second slower for him than for everyone else.
Three starts into his Rotherham United career, Aydın has two goals and an assist, and an average rating of 7.7 across those matches. Before this run he had not started a game for the club at all. The slot he has taken is the attacking midfield role that Rodrighão has usually held, and the selection has not been a rotation or a favour to a new signing. It has been a decision about who makes the team play better, and so far the answer has been the nineteen-year-old.
None of this was a secret. He arrived from Beşiktaş A.Ş. on 26 July for £10.7m, and the argument then was whether a Premier Division club should spend that on a teenager. He had already collected the NXGN prize for 2063 after a Beşiktaş season of 13 goals in 33 games, and he had spent four years in Istanbul scoring 20 in 65. There were eleven senior caps for Turkey and seven goals in them before he had turned twenty. The scoring record was never the doubt. The doubt was whether a playmaker's job in England, with its speed and its crowding, would suit him straight away.
What has struck me is the timing of his runs rather than the speed of them. He receives the ball where the space is about to be, not where it is, and he is happy to be the second-last pass. Aydın is not a number ten who needs the game to come to him; he goes and finds the pocket, then holds it just long enough for a runner to commit. The composure in front of goal is the part that translates most easily, and it is why his name keeps appearing on the scoresheet rather than only in the build-up.
Rotherham have built something unusual in South Yorkshire, and a player like this fits it. The club's rise from the lower leagues to the Premier Division in 2056, the 2059 FA Cup that followed, and a first Champions League campaign in 2062 were all achieved on recruitment that had to be right the first time. Spending £10.7m on a teenager is not their usual shape, which tells you how highly they rated him. It also means the patience around him will be real rather than rhetorical.
The partnership forming around him matters too. Aydın's best work has come with Daudé Verdonk and Santiago Espíndola giving him targets ahead of the ball, a triangle that has looked more settled with each start. The understanding is early, and it is already the sort of thing opponents have to plan for.
Rodrighão will get his chances again; a long season asks that of every squad. But the shirt is Aydın's at the moment, and the question is no longer whether he can play at this level. It is how long he can keep a good player out of the side, and what Rotherham look like when the answer is a very long time indeed.