Cardiff City beat Bolton 2-0 last night, putting them level on points with third placed Derby.
Marko Grujic, on loan from Liverpool until the end of the season, started as the holding midfielder in a 4-3-3, and racked up some quite bizarre stats!
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Championship fans are all talking about Marko Grujic’s tackling yesterday…
Firstly, he won ALL 15 of his 15 aerial duels. That’s insane for a centre-back, let alone a midfielder.
🤚 Marko Grujic made his fifth start for Cardiff last night and completed his first full 90 mins in the Championship.
Still playing deeper but by most accounts his best game so far: most successful tackles (three) of any player and won *15* aerial duels. #LFC pic.twitter.com/DE9sjpeDdd
— Jack Lusby (@jacklusby_) February 14, 2018
But the rest of his game feels like it was a little all over the place…
Not only did he only complete 60% of his passes (abysmal for a midfielder), but he had five shots off target, as well!
(Jurgen Klopp would be infuriated to know he was having potshots from outside the area every 15 minutes….)
However, he did complete three tackles, which is a decent defensive contribution considering the headers won, too.
Marko Grujic played as the full game as the 6 in a 2-0 win over Bolton today. 15 aerials won 👀 (Also had 5 shots off target 😂) pic.twitter.com/2WYQatLkBv
— 🔴⚽️🏈🏋️ (@lubomerkov) February 13, 2018
What this kind of performance proves, if anything, is that Klopp was right to assume Grujic too raw at the moment to compete for Liverpool!
He clearly has unbelievable physical traits, but he needs to develop his understanding of the game tenfold.
And a Liverpool midfielder needs 85%+ passing stats, too. But the main thing is he’s getting consistent minutes. We should be grateful to Neil Warnock for that.
