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Player Micky van de Ven

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Or VdV gets involved in very few actual duels due to being more of a sweeper to Romero's stopper, and his low success rate stems from the inherent volatility of small samples.

I'm not the most graph literate, but he's winning 1.5 per game with around 50 percent success rate as far as I can tell. So it's around 3 duels per game in total. Meanwhile you see most other players in the graph getting involved in 7-8 per game.
 
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I doubt the data is wrong.

He’s banging in goals, and he’s fast. Also moderately comfortable on the ball. But is he good at meat and potatoes box defending ? Not so much.
Uh Huh Whatever GIF by Zypto
 
Van Der Ven is the fastest defender in the league. Van Dijk is also right at the bottom of that stat.

Probably because attackers don’t engage him and when they do it’s because the situation is 80-20 in their favour. Rarely do I see a player run at VDV.

Right now VDV is clearly our best performing CB and one of the best in the league.
 
Maybe the data doesn’t actually mean much.
I think the data suggests a couple of things; 1) players are unlikely engaging in duels with VDV as they see him as unlikely to beat and 2) VDV does the majority of his defending prior to engaging in a duel, ie beating the offensive player to a loose pass or intercepting.
At least that seems to coincide with the eye test as he's not an inactive/passive defender by any means
 
I think the data suggests a couple of things; 1) players are unlikely engaging in duels with VDV as they see him as unlikely to beat and 2) VDV does the majority of his defending prior to engaging in a duel, ie beating the offensive player to a loose pass or intercepting.
At least that seems to coincide with the eye test as he's not an inactive/passive defender by any means

I don’t think that can be it under Frank, where we spend a good chunk of time parked in our own box.
 
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