I note there was serious savaging of Eric Dier online this morning, and so I thought instead of composing a piece based upon the hollering of people with questionable judgement, I’d take a look at the stats. There are very few ways to cheat the data, in fact all a player can do is use misdirection – as Dele Alli used to – until Jose Mourinho caught up with him.
Looking at the defensive disciplines first, it really is difficult to see the gaping holes that Eric might need to explain to anyone this morning.
When it came to defensive duels, Dier hit 60%, his mean average is 62.8%, which is lower, but not to be confused with a nose dive.
Eric’s aerial duels mean average is 56.6%, last night it was 100%. So in fact he over performed here.
Losing the ball in your own half is painful to watch. Eric’s gave the ball away twice against Ludogorets. If we used this metric to start binning players we’d have nobody left to field.
What’s the ‘opposite’ of losing the ball in your own half? Recovering it in the opposition’s half. Here, Dier did fine, gathering the ball up 10 times, twice in the other lots’ half.
Passing accuracy is an unforgiving metric; the inability to kick the ball to people wearing the same colour shirt as you hopefully doesn’t require explanation. Eric Dier hit 95%, just 4 off passes in the 93 minutes he played.
Eric’s duels won was 63% last night, his mean average is 55.7%.
So all the evaluations of people telling us how they feel about a footballer are fundamentally without value, to me at least. In fact, Tweets shouting at players are, in my experience, mostly just people shouting.
Jeffrey Palmer RIP.
I thought he did not pay badly looked pretty secure give the lad a break prefer him and auderwield together.
On a different subject, Harry Kane & Sonny have ( 37 goals & assists )between them this season in only 14 matches.Son 10 goals & 5 assists,Kane 12 goals and 10 assists.
Unfortunately, social media platforms, like Twitter, give emotionally incontinent halfwits, deficient in cerebral function, the opportunity to vent their immaturity and parade their stupidity before the rest of humanity.
Rather than being studiously ignored, as is richly deserved, their toxic observations are then picked up and highlighted, parasitically, by other social media websites, who seem to revel in the opportunity to publish such provocative drivel.
To those of us possessed of an ounce of rationality, Eric had a decent game last night, as the stats highlight and the Alderweireld/Dier CB pairing, whilst not stellar, is currently the best combination we have. A fact Jose appears now to have recognised.
Would some Spurs fans be happier that we had some type of David Luiz/Nicolas Otamendi type Centre Half in there ??? I was absolutely astonished at some of the abuse directed at Dier this morning, but my answer to that is he goes about his work without fuss and without pomp and circumstance.. If it wasn’t for a completely unfortunate deflection last night, we would have had another clean sheet..
Whenever I see/read the ‘Dier is useless’ brigade I just think ‘(s)he must be stupid/know nothing about football’. I know that is simplistic and patronising but the abuse of Dier is ridiculous. I don’t think he should ever have stopped being a centre back (although playing in midfield may have helped strangely) as by now he would be a top class CB. Having said that he is now really growing into the role again which is great for the club. Might be worth thinking about who our manager is and whether he would pick someone ‘useless’ so consistently. Keep outing the ‘get out of my club’ idiots.
Dier has some nutty moments. Don’t we all? But he’s strong and committed and when his long balls are on target (as I sense is increasingly happening) they can be astonishing
99% of Twitter is useless and/or ignorant shouting. Isn’t that why Twitter is there?
Dier has been great for us since he went back to central defence. His attitude is also spot on.
Football is such a knee jerk reactionary sport and it now has the added “bonus” of social media giving people/idiots the platform to spout instantaneous waffle..