Watching him give it the ‘ave it! on the halfway line made me think he’s settled in quicker than most.
19
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He won 2 out of 5 aerials according to the official stats (40%).
Was very good today.
Where did you see those stats? He won a lot more than two headers today.
Have to say first time in a while I found it surreal watching a player debut for us. He is the closest thing in world football to Rio and will win us points routinely going forward just as Rio did. What a player.
You clown
That's what happens with zonal marking. If you stand still and a defender the same height as you gets a running jump they're always going to get above you. It happens.
Remember Dunk beat Maguire in a similar situation at Old trafford?
Varane was excellent today.
This is clearly where stats are very misleading in that case. Nobody who watched that game today would say he won 40% of his duels
Excellent debut.
He headed away at least two corners in the first half alone. If I had to guess I’d say it was more like five or six.
Are the dual stats “contested” headers rather than just headers?
Yep
I think so, yeah. Plus you have the “clearances” stat. Can’t that include headers too?
Centrebacks always win many more headers than what you can see in the stats for aerial duels. To be an aerial duel it must be a duel, not just every header. If you’re not challenged physically it is a clearance. It has always been like that. Maguire won 2/4 in this match as example.
He was great. Very composed and dealt with a lot of tricky stuff in that first half.
In which case that’s completely different. His positioning at corners/crosses was great and he had multiple clearances where he was uncontested.
Right and you also have to take into consideration the fact that you don’t have to actually win a header to win a dual even though the statistics don’t suggest that. If you get up for a header and do enough to challenge your opponent so their header is anything but on target, you’ve done your job and more often than not it results in a better outcome.
What I loved about his performance today was everything he did was so effortless. Normally, whenever the attackers get past Maguire, we usually concede. Today, we had Varane to provide cover to Maguire.
That’s fair. Just shows how stats can be manipulated though. The corners he headed clear were done in a way that he prevented it becoming a duel, which is a massive improvement on what we saw last season.
Really good debut
A good example being AWB’s excellent defending at the far post vs Jimenez the one and only time Traore put a decent cross in.
I guess like all stats (in any field) they only make sense with a large sample size. Today Varane looked very good in the air. I’m sure the stats will confirm this soon enough.
Side note. I think Lindelof is better in the air than he’s given credit for.
On www.ilovelindelof.com, a site that he owns and operates.
It’s not manipulated, but aerial stats are more difficult to understand than most other stats
Aerials are broken down in to clearances and aerial duels but a clearance with precision could also become a pass or interception…
Anyways
Varane won 2 aerial duels and lost 3. He also had 2 headed clearances.
stats from Whoscored
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Watching him defend was such a huge contrast to Lindelof. Varane actually cut shit off before the threat happens and moved to help cover his teammates instead of pointing fingers at where they should have covered.
Lindelof sees those same things, but Varane's instincts and reading is levels above. Plus Varane is so long and two strides, he's across to block or stand a player up. He just glides across to cover. He was as vocal as he could be and it was great to see. Not sure if you saw his post-match interview, but he seemed like he genuinely loved the challenge as was like, yep, this is what I wanted and it was fresh!
I probably shouldn’t have used the word manipulated. Rather that they can be used to make something seem better/worse than they actually are.It’s not manipulated, but aerial stats are more difficult to understand than most other stats
Aerials are broken down in to clearances and aerial duels but the. A clearance with precision could also become a pass or interception…
Anyways
Varane won 2 aerial duels and lost 3. He also had 2 headed clearances.
stats from Whoscored
For example, two “uncontested” headed clearances from a corner might be far more important than losing a duel way further up the pitch, that he might have had no business winning.
He looked like he was in total control all game. Even with players running at him he knew exactly what to do. The perfect start.
Felt a sense of calmness with him there even when Adama made that burst through the middle at the start and was sort of 1v1 with him. I felt confident he knew the right thing to do or even if he ran at him there’s very few CBs more equipped than him to be able to stop him due to his pace and power.
He’s going to be some player for us I’m sure of it, you could already see at times him shouting and trying to get everyone going which is so underrated.
Just hope there’s less games in the future however which are that frantic and we can actually control more games.
He’s going to be some player for us I’m sure of it, you could already see at times him shouting and trying to get everyone going which is so underrated.
Just hope there’s less games in the future however which are that frantic and we can actually control more games.
He got bailed out by DDG's wonder save from the corner after he got done by Saiss, but other than that he was flawless.
Phenomenal attitude to have.
Probably the most defending he's had to do in a single game since his Lens days, and he handled it like a boss. The signing of the season.
Anyone else annoyed he got completely overlooked on MOTD2?
It's the BBC, who cares.
What I loved most about his performance was that after about 20mins you could already see he was a better player and defender than Maguire and it brought a level of calmess at the back I've not seen since Rio and Vidic. Our back four was horribly exposed by a porous midfield and their wide players were giving our FBs all sorts of problems but both CBs, especially Varane were able to anticipate and cover excellently when openings arose.
As a defender he has the lot. Reads the game perfectly, great in the air, fast, is aggressive when he needs to and his passing was much better than I expected based on his previous games I'd watched.
As a defender he has the lot. Reads the game perfectly, great in the air, fast, is aggressive when he needs to and his passing was much better than I expected based on his previous games I'd watched.
You mean the partnership that never was?
We did have the Blind-Smalling partnership that was pretty decent.
I felt the same way the first time I ran a class V rapid in my kayak. I had only done class IV until then and man, it was a rush.
I was having too much fun at the expense of Chris and Phil, who worked hard and had some moments but never found anything approaching a partnership of any kind.
They hardly ever played at centrehalf with each other to even call what they had a partnership, though.
Yes he did well in that. He was trying to bait Traore to go down the outside of his right where the empty space was, which made him make another pass instead. In that situation, when you have a fast attacking player running at you towards your goal in open space with runners to his side, forcing another pass/delaying their opportunity in attacking your goal is always the best risk-to-reward choice.
So true
.Agree, which is why I don't understand why Lindelof's fans have a hard time understanding the criticism he gets. It's one thing to recognise but you need to act on it too. If you wanted to be generous you could say putting Varane's body on Lindelof's brain would give you the same player (covering style, reading of the game etc) but the fact is that Lindelof doesn't have this physical prowess or any other elite attribute to make up for it. It's so utterly bizzare to see him highly rated by some of our fans for essentially doing risk-adverse and minimal engagement type of defending. He's no hack and deserves his spot in the squad but the clamouring that he's not a weak link etc has pretty much been proven wrong by Varane's performance today; there's no shame in that of course.
That’s just not true just in case you really believe it
I don’t pretend to to watch la liga every week but I know enough that especially in recent seasons Real fall behind surprisingly frequently.
Varane was fantastic today. However, had that been LIndelof getting muscled out and losing that header which resulted in the De Gea double save the Caf would be going into meltdown. With that being said, i don't expect any defender to win every single header and this is why De Gea should be out punching balls that are in his 6. He made the saves today, but we have seen too many similar occasions where he hasn't and the central defenders have taken the blame...
Good performance for a CB's debut. Even got a goal contribution (with a pass I could've made).
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