If you don’t follow @StatsBomb, you should!
They put together superb statistical analyses of every player in the top flight and around Europe.
What’s important, is that they don’t simply rate a player on ‘number of actions,’ which is irrelevant for centre-backs, who make fewer defensive actions when playing for a good side.
SEE MORE:
(Video) Proof VVD’s defensive performance v Spurs was otherworldly
Let us explain this graph below, which has sent Twitter wild…
The outer ring is the top 95 percentile in the country. This means that for almost every metric you should assess a centre-back by, van Dijk is either the best or one of the best at it. He has zero weaknesses. The only metric VVD isn’t extremely high in is ‘pressures,’ meaning he doesn’t press attackers. He just stands in the right place and takes the ball off them a little later!
Their reaction in the caption says it all. Mind-bogglingly dominant.
Virgil van Dijk, Liverpool 18-19.
You should be very careful when using stats to evaluate centreb-
****ING HELL. pic.twitter.com/9kPwtacyKb
— StatsBomb (@StatsBomb) April 4, 2019