Here we will look specifically at the footballing side of Eric Dier’s activities yesterday because this is a football blog. Anyone wishing to pay gushing tributes is welcome to avail of the countless other places online – thanks very much.
If we look at the own goal, what we get is a masterclass of Dier. In one move, he manages to ignore all the Newcastle players near him, and whilst keeping his body facing his own goal, manages to lose control of his mental processing and at the crucial moment, fails to decide between his head and his foot. The ball goes in off his midriff. Unmitigated incompetence.
Eric’s passing accuracy wasn’t good enough, either. 82% is at least 10% too low against this class of opposition.
One positive was duels won, 78% is good stuff, and this was also the case to aerial duels where Dier hit 80%.
Eric made 5 interceptions but managed to lose possession 9 times, on 7 occasions this was in his own half.